Health and Welfare Policy

Organisational change in health and welfare services during the last decades challenges traditional bureuaucratic and welfare professional ways of organizing by introducing managerialism and market principles. The course discusses how welfare services can be understood as handling «wicked problems» that cannot be solved, structurally facing contradictory expectations. It introduces central concepts and theories to understand what informs health- and welfare policy decisions. It identifies the central components of a health- and welfare system, explores the variations between different countries and discusses recent reforms in OECD-countries.

Knowledge - the student shall know:
-the main development of the welfare state in general and the healthcare system in particular
-the main components of health and welfare policy, and different classifications of health and welfare systems
-the managerial challenges of the health and welfare services
-the reforms of the health and welfare services: background, measures and results

Skills - the student shall demonstrate the ability to:
-describe different health and welfare systems
-apply central concepts to analyse managerial challenges in the health and welfare services
-use central theoretical approaches to health and welfare policy to -explain variations between countries and to analyse distribution of power and resources in the health and welfare services

Lectures and seminars. If few students attend the course the two first weeeks of teaching, the course will be given as an individual study course with supervision. Please contact the departement for further information.

Form of assessment: Individual paper