Study Results from University of Cambridge Broaden Understanding of Managed Care (Patronage, Partnership, Voluntarism: Community-based Health Insurance and the Improvisation of Universal Health Coverage In Senegal): Managed Care

2023 MAR 28 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- A new study on Managed Care is now available. According to news originating from Cambridge, United Kingdom, by NewsRx editors, the research stated, “The turn towards Universal Health Coverage (UHC) in the past decade raises the question of the role of the state, following years of state withdrawal and a frag-mented approach to public health. Senegal introduced its version of UHC, Couverture Maladie Universelle (CMU) in 2013 and this paper explores early efforts to fund it through the establishment of community-based health insurance (CBHI).”

Financial support for this research came from Economic and Social Research Council.

Our news journalists obtained a quote from the research from the University of Cambridge, “The paper draws on ethnographic research at mutual health organisations, or mutuelles de sante ‘ as they are commonly referred to in francophone countries, which manage CBHI. The research was carried out as part of broader doctoral fieldwork on poverty and social protection in the capital, Dakar, in 2017-18. Responding to recent calls for the move away from the voluntary nature of CBHI with government subsidies and the professionalisation of management, this paper considers the financial strain that mutuelles were under. By drawing on the concept of ‘improvisation’ as it has come to be employed in recent ethnographies of health infrastructure in contexts of scarcity, the paper attends to the ways in which mutuelles and the voluntary workers that run them sought alternative forms of support, with a particular focus on patronage and partnership.”

According to the news editors, the research concluded: “I argue that what might appear to be very minimal gestures of support and material investment serve to maintain a sense of hope and potential in CMU, one however that is fragile and potentially unsustainable.”

This research has been peer-reviewed.

For more information on this research see: Patronage, Partnership, Voluntarism: Community-based Health Insurance and the Improvisation of Universal Health Coverage In Senegal. Social Science & Medicine, 2023;319:115491. Social Science & Medicine can be contacted at: Pergamon-elsevier Science Ltd, The Boulevard, Langford Lane, Kidlington, Oxford OX5 1GB, England.

The news correspondents report that additional information may be obtained from Anna Wood, University of Cambridge, Dept. of Social Anthropology, Free Sch Lane, Cambridge CB2 3RF, United Kingdom.

The direct object identifier (DOI) for that additional information is: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2022.115491. This DOI is a link to an online electronic document that is either free or for purchase, and can be your direct source for a journal article and its citation.

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