Policy network and primary health care reform : A social network analysis
(2012) 8th UKSNA Conference — Location: Bristol (UK) (28.June.2012)
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- Background: Reforming health care organisation is known to be an erratic and complex process involving many actors and political factors. It is however unclear how these political factors affect the likelihood of reforming health care system. Aims: Our aim is to investigate the role of the policy network on the health care reform process. In particular we describe the network of elite health care stakeholders and its role onto policy beliefs and attitude towards reforming primary care. Methods: A face-to-face interview survey was carried out in Belgium with 102 elite stakeholders. Each interviewee was asked to score solutions for improving the role of general practice into the health care system, and to nominate influent stakeholders. Social network analysis was used to describe the network of nominees. Multivariate analysis was used to analyse the role of centrality, brokerage and homophily factors on stakeholder’s principal attitude towards reforming primary care. Results: The stakeholder influence network was highly homophilous. Homophilous stakeholders were less likely to display a reformative stance. Stakeholders with higher degree centrality had more intermediate reformative stance than stakholders with lower degree centrality. The more a stakeholder was in a broker position the more likely he was to display a more reformative perspective. Conclusion: We conclude that social network may help to understand how health care reform can languish or accelerate. Heterophilous and brokers stakeholders are those to rely on to make change happen.
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Lorant, V., & Nicaise, P. (2012). Policy network and primary health care reform : A social network analysis. 8th UKSNA Conference, Bristol (UK). https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/224035