Research Highlight 1: National Health Insurance

Taiwan's National Health Insurance (NHI) is internationally applauded. Many of our faculty members are involved in the planning, design, evaluation, and ongoing reform of the NHI. Their research focuses on payment systems, accessibility of care, assessment of quality of care, and cost equity and efficiency. Research findings have been published in leading domestic and international journals and have contributed to policy reforms.

Research Highlight 2: Health Economics and Health Services Management

Health economics concerns the demand for and supply of health services, including health demands, demands for health care, behaviors of providers and institutions, and decisions about health service provision. Our faculty members apply econometric methods to study healthcare needs and healthcare provision from a health economics perspective. Research carried out by our faculty includes competition in the healthcare market, physician prescribing behaviors, continuity and effectiveness of care, and economic evaluation of health service intervention programs. Furthermore, through big data analyses, our faculty members conduct research to explore the healthcare needs of specific subgroups, such as people with chronic diseases, women of reproductive age with maternal care needs, children with primary care needs, etc.

Research Highlight 3: Aging and Long-Term Care

Aging is a global phenomenon, and its consequent health and long-term care needs are a common challenge worldwide. As Taiwan is one of the most rapidly aging countries, our faculty are engaged in research related to aging and long-term care to meet the fast-growing healthcare needs. Research topics include healthy aging, assessment and management of frailty, hospital discharge preparation, integrated care services for the elder, management of long-term care services (including home-based care, community-based care, and care provided in institutions), quality of long-term care services, policy development, and service delivery and effectiveness. Research findings aim to lay the foundation for developing long-term care policies and the sustainability of long-term care sectors and deepening the research field of elderly health care.

Research Highlight 4: Society, Culture, and Health Inequalities

The occurrence of disease and the distribution of health outcomes are closely linked to people’s social conditions. The social determinants of health (SDH) encompass a wide range of factors, including public policies and social systems, cultures and societal values, social stratification, and socioeconomic and cultural disadvantage at the individual level. Researchers of IHPM have devoted themselves to researching health inequalities. Main research topics include children's health, workers’ health, sexual and gender minority health, and geographical disparity of health and healthcare utilization. Through multiple research methods, including interviews, surveys, data analysis, observation, policy analyses, and international comparison studies, we aim to provide empirical evidence for improving public health policies.

Research Highlight 5: Ethical analysis and the right-based approach to health policy

The purposes of public health interventions and health policy decisions have normative implications. What are inequitable differences in health, and why must we eliminate them? What is the right to health, and who is responsible for realizing it? Where should the boundaries be set when the state determines to regulate our lifestyles in the name of population health? How to distribute the limited health budgets, material resources, and human power can be considered just. The Human Rights and Public Health Ethics researchers analyze international human rights treaties and relevant court cases and establish ethics assessment instruments to determine, critically examine, and provide the legitimate grounds on which law and policies are based. This also enables an evaluation for policy improvement when policies are implemented, promoting public trust in health authorities and facilitating the efficacy of policy measures.