Health Systems Policy, Finance, and Organization

Stella R. Quah, PhD, is an adjunct professor at the Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore. She received her BA in Sociology from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, her MSc in Sociology from the Florida State University as a Fulbright-Hays scholar, and her PhD in Sociology from the National University of Singapore (formerly the University of Singapore). Prior to her current appointment, she was a professor at the NUS Department of Sociology, where she was a faculty member from 1977 to 2009. Before joining the sociology department, she worked at the Department of Social Medicine and Public Health of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Singapore. Her work on medical sociology and public health has continued throughout her career. She introduced and taught medical sociology at both the Department of Sociology and the Faculty of Medicine, designing focused medical sociology modules for social science students, nursing students, and public health modules for the Master of Public Health, Department of Community, Occupational, and Family Medicine, NUS, and its successor. When the Graduate School of Medical Studies was set up at the Faculty of Medicine, she taught the medical sociology modules as part of the “Foundations of Public Health” and “Lifestyle and Behaviour in Health and Disease” for the MMed (Public Health). During her sabbaticals from NUS, Professor Quah had appointments by invitation as a research associate and a visiting scholar at the Institute of Governmental Studies, University of California, Berkeley (1986–1987); the Center for International Studies, MIT; and the Department of Sociology, Harvard University (1993–1994); the Harvard-Yenching Institute (1997); the Stanford Program in International Legal Studies, Stanford University (1997); the National Centre for Developmental Studies, Australian National University (2002); and the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University (2006). Her professional activities include her work as the chair of the Medical Sociology Research Committee (RC15) of the International Sociological Association (ISA) from 1990 to 1994; ISA vice president for research (1994–1998); the chairperson of the ISA Research Council (1994–1998); and consultant to WHO and UN-ESCAP, among other international and national organizations. She is a member of the American Sociological Association and a member of several institutional review boards. On publications, she was an associate editor of International Sociology (1998–2004). She is currently a member of the editorial advisory boards of several international peer-reviewed journals, including the International Advisory Board of the British Journal of Sociology, the Editorial Advisory Board, Health Sociology Review; the Editorial International Advisory Board, Sociology of Health and Illness; Editorial Board, Marriage & Family Review. Her areas of research and consultancy include health services utilization; the governance of epidemics; the role of family caregivers in physical and mental health; self-medication; health risk behaviors (including smoking, alcohol consumption, and psychoactive substance use); sociocultural factors in infectious diseases, heart disease, and cancer. She has published many journal articles, book chapters, and 26 books, 11 of them as author and 15 as editor and coeditor.

• Part I Health policy and public healthPart II Health financingPart III Organization of health servicesPart IV Key features of health systems around the world