Pharmaceutical Policy, Impact and Health Outcomes

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Background

Pharmaceutical policy, as part of national healthcare policy, has multifaceted impacts. Particularly, it plays a vital role to promote the rational use of medicines, which, according to WHO, requires that patients receive medications appropriate to their clinical needs, in doses that meet their own individual requirements, for an adequate period of time, and at the lowest cost to them and their community.

Medicines, when used appropriately, are major contributors to the health and well-being of individuals and populations, and they waste resources and endanger health when used incorrectly. Consequently, pharmaceutical policies address availability, access, affordability, effectiveness, utilization, safety, expenditure, and quality use of medicines across settings and affect the behaviour of prescribers, dispensers, and other stakeholders. Public policies though can be ineffective or produce unintended consequences. This research topic will examine the strengths and weaknesses of pharmaceutical policy, and its impact on medicine use and consequently on health outcomes.

Pharmaceutical policies pursuing the rational use of medicines are in place across countries. However, the impact of policies on medicine use or the health outcomes of individuals or populations varies across countries depending on the activities of health authorities to instigate and monitor measures to enhance appropriate medicine use within available resources. Policies and influences from key stakeholder groups can create considerable inequity within fixed budgets, as well as increase patient harm including increasing antimicrobial resistance, which needs to be avoided. On the other hand, appropriate policies can increase available resources to improve care with increased use of new and existing medicines as well as generally enhance future outcomes.

We’d like to capture various opinions and examples in various fields, including access to medicines and their patterns of use, multiple sourced medicines and biosimilars, adherence to medicines, prescribing behaviour, decision-making based on real world data, health technology assessment and others.

This Research Topic welcomes contributions, in the form of original research articles or review and opinions, to describe policy interventions and their influence/ impact
Papers that provide both theoretical and empirical findings are welcome. Potential topics of interest include:
• Pharmaceutical policies affecting medicine use and access; prescribing and dispensing behaviour; adherence.
• Social and health issues related to quality use of medicines.
• Medical governance and medication management including multilevel, multi-stakeholder, and multi-sectoral approaches to healthy and affected communities.
• Challenges, criticism, and ethical issues related to medicine use and availability
• Pertinent ideas relevant to medicine policy including pharmaceuticals

We encourage contributions from academics and others researching and influencing medicine policies, as well as practitioners and patients. We are interested in how policy and practice change over time and how it compares across countries to improve medicine use including theories and philosophies that underpin pharmaceutical policy.

Keywords: Pharmaceutical policy, Rational use of medicines, Quality use of medicines, Medication-related problems, Real world data

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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