Editorial

Citation

Mukherjee, A. (2015), "Editorial", International Journal of Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Marketing, Vol. 9 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJPHM-04-2015-0013

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: International Journal of Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Marketing, Volume 9, Issue 2

In this issue, we will explore international health management and public policy issues. We will look at how consumer attitudes affect contraception usage, factors of medical tourism into the USA, nursing governance in Vietnam, attitudes toward acupuncture in Hong Kong and constructing legal authorities for health data sharing.

The first article explores consumer ambivalence toward contraception. This research paper, authored by an international team of scholars – Dr Piyush Sharma (Curtin University, Australia), Dr M. Krishna Erramilli (Illinois Institute of Technology, USA), Dr Cindy M.Y. Chung (Goethe University, Germany) and Dr Bharadwaj Sivakumaran (Great Lakes Institute of Management, India) – builds on prior research focusing on previously ignored constructs of consumer ambivalence and intercourse frequency. The research finds that consumer attitudes, satisfaction with familiar contraceptive methods and intercourse frequency have a positive effect on contraceptive usage.

The second article focuses on factors that influence medical travel into the USA. While there is significant research on out-bound (from USA to the rest of the world) medical tourism, in-bound medical tourism has been largely unexplored. Authored by Dr Tricia Johnson, Jaymie Youngquist, Dr Andrew Garman, Dr Samuel Hohmann and Paola Cieslak, all of Rush University, Chicago, USA, this study evaluates the potential of 24 country-level measures for predicting the number of international medical travelers into the USA. The authors identify seven factors in this model that can provide help in strategic outreach and business development for hospitals and policymakers.

Next, our third article is titled “Nursing governance and clinical error control” The purpose of the article is to analyze nursing governance as a mechanism to reduce clinical errors. The study, conducted in Vietnamese hospitals, finds a positive correlation between an ethical approach in nursing care and clinical error control, as compared to a pure legal/economic approach. The author is Luu Trong Tuan (International University, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam).

The fourth article explores attitudes toward acupuncture in Hong Kong. The authors are Dr Kara Chan, Lennon Tsang, and Dr Timothy Fung, all from Hong Kong Baptist University. This study is aimed at describing and exploring how consumers perceive acupuncture as a medical treatment. Their results show that attitude toward acupuncture consists of five dimensions and that trust and reputation are major factors in consumer attitudes.

Our last article, “Constructing legal authority to facilitate multi-level interagency health data sharing in the USA”, explores specific policy proposals in dealing with health-care data sharing. The article proposes a multi-level information infrastructure network linking agencies with an emphasis on improving rapid identification of bioterror and disease epidemic threats. The author is Dr Beth Fiedler (CEO, Data2Policy, Jacksonville, Florida).

I hope you will enjoy reading these articles and we welcome further contributions from both academics and health-care practitioners on related topics.

Avinandan Mukherjee - Editor