Faculty Bibliography

A network of family-based community-oriented primary health programs, or Programa Agentes Communita rios de Saude, and family health programs, or Programa Saude da Familia, introduced almost 2 decades ago were the Brazilian government's health care models to restructure primary care under the Unified Health System, or Sistema Unico de Saude. The latter offers comprehensive coverage to all, although it is used by those of lower income, and despite achievement in the last quarter century, access to health services and gradients of health status continue to persist along income, educational background, racial, and religious lines.

The Russian Federation health system has its roots in the country's complex political history. The Ministry of Health and Social Development and its associated federal services are the principal Russian institutions subserving the Russian Federation. Funding for the health system goes through 2 channels: the general revenue budget managed by federal, regional, and local health authorities, and the Mandatory Health Insurance Fund. Although the Soviet Union was the first country in the world to guarantee free medical care as a constitutional right to all its citizens, quality and accessibility are in question.

Although a stated right for all Indians, equal access to health care in India is impeded by socioeconomic barriers. With its 3-tier system of public health care centers in villages, district hospitals, and tertiary care hospitals, government expenditure in India is inordinately low, with a disproportionate emphasis on private health spending. Accordingly, the poorest receive a minority of the available subsidies, whereas the richest obtain more than a third, fostering a divide in health care infrastructure across the rich and poor in urban and rural settings. This paradigm has implications for domestic Indian public health and global public health.

China has recently emerged as an important global partner. However, like other developing nations, China has experienced dramatic demographic and epidemiologic changes in the past few decades. Population discontent with the health care system has led to major reforms. China's distinctive health care system, including its unique history, vast infrastructure, the speed of health reform, and economic capacity to make important advances in health care, nonetheless, has incomplete insurance coverage for urban and rural dwellers, uneven access, mixed quality of health care, increasing costs, and risk of catastrophic health expenditures.

The South African health care system is embedded in a background of racial subordination and sexual violence against girls and women and of hierarchical male authority from youth to adulthood. Low wages, unemployment, urban overcrowding, inadequate sanitation, malnutrition, crime, and violence have contributed to economic and health inequality. With more health-insured whites than blacks and the proportion of gross national product spent on health care slowly increasing, two-thirds of health expenditures have been consumed by the private sector at a time when the cost of health insurance has risen to more than 3 times the rate of the consumer price index.

Vasculitis is a spectrum of clinicopathologic disorders defined by inflammation of arteries of veins of varying caliber with variable tissue injury. Headache may be an important clue to vasculitic involvement of central nervous system (CNS) vessels. CNS vasculitis may be primary, in which only intracranial vessels are involved in the inflammatory process, or secondary to another known disorder with overlapping systemic involvement. A suspicion of vasculitis based on the history, clinical examination, or laboratory studies warrants prompt evaluation and treatment to forestall progression and avert cerebral ischemia or infarction.