Amenable Mortality: The Authors Respond

We are pleased that George Alleyne agrees that our paper (Jan/Feb08) is a timely input to the political debate about health.As we stressed in the final paragraph of our paper, we fullyagree with him that our analyses are only a starting point andgive rise to as many questions as they answer. Singapore isnot the only country where preventable and treatable causesof mortality have followed different trajectories; this wasreported from Spain more than a decade ago, and we have subsequentlydescribed it elsewhere.¹ We hope that others will follow upour findings and that we can contribute to a dialogue that willallow us all to learn lessons from elsewhere, to reduce preventabledeaths. We in Europe benefited greatly from the experiencesof New York and other U.S. cities in banning smoking in publicplaces; yet, as has been demonstrated elsewhere, there are lessonsto learn for the United States on the importance of ensuringuniversal access to affordable health care to improve populationhealth outcomes.²

Ellen Nolte and C. Martin McKee
European Centre on Health of Societies in Transition, London,England

NOTES

X. Albert et al., "The Effectiveness of Health Systems in Influencing Avoidable Mortality: A Study in Valencia, Spain, 1975–90," Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health 50, no. 3 (1996): 320–325[Abstract/Free Full Text]; and E. Nolte et al., "The Contribution of Medical Care to Changing Life Expectancy in Germany and Poland," Social Science and Medicine 55, no. 11 (2002): 1905–1921.[CrossRef][ISI]
E. Ward et al., "Association of Insurance with Cancer Care Utilization and Outcomes," CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians 58, no. 1 (2008): 9–31[Abstract/Free Full Text]; and C. Hoffman and J. Paradise, "Health Insurance and Access to Health Care in the United States," Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences (published online 22 October 2007; 10.1196/annals.1425.007).

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Amenable Mortality: The Authors Respond