Healthcare Policies and Social and Health Services

The course aims to provide the basic knowledge and conceptual tools necessary to understand the functioning and evolution of the Italian health and social-health system in a comparative perspective, with particular attention to its most recent evolution (in response to demographic, socio-economic and political and institutional challenges), and future prospects. To this end, in the first part, the fundamental concepts for the study of health and social-health policies and the analysis of the historical-comparative evolution of health and social-health systems will be introduced. The second part of the course is devoted to the analysis of the main reforms in health and social-health policies and to the challenges that policy-makers had to face, focusing in particular on the political dynamics and the role of the actors in the process of recalibrating and reforming the health service both at central level and at regional level, and long-term care policies at national and local level. The course intends also to take into consideration policies and intervention involving non-public actors in the health and social-health sectors (such as supplementary healthcare measures).

More specifically, the lessons will focus on the following topics:

The welfare state: fundamental concepts and general framework
Health policy: basic concepts and definitions
Healthcare systems compared
The historical evolution of health systems and new challenges
From the introduction of the Italian NHS to the health reforms of the 1990s and 2000s
Healthcare, fiscal federalism and regionalization

LTC policies: concepts and definitions
The challenge of an aging population as a "new social risk"
LTC models, measures and services compared
The LTC system in Italy
Innovating LTC policies: what role for public, private and local actors?