Objective To comprehensively summarize and analyze the status quo, assessing contents and problems of the assessment studies on appropriate health technology in China. Methods With the search terms and strategies predefined by repeated discussion and pre-retrieval, all literature on appropriate health technology assessment in China published from October 1949 to March 2012 were searched in the following databases: CBM, VIP, CNKI and WanFang Data. According to the inclusion and exclusion criteria, two reviewers independently screened literature, and extracted and cross-checked data. Disagreements were resolved by discussion or by involving a third researcher. The qualitative synthesis method was used to analyze the studies. Results Among total 174 included studies, 117 were cross-sectional. Targeted populations were patients and community residents who had received the service or treatment of appropriate health technology, as well as the grassroots medical staffs and workers from marketing organization who had used or carried out the appropriate health technologies. Appropriate health technologies mainly contained four fields of appropriate health technology: traditional Chinese medicine, western medicine, family planning services and community health services. Most types of diseases involved in those technologies were circulatory system diseases, and high blood pressure was highly concerned. The contents of appropriate health technology assessment mainly included 6 aspects: effectiveness, acceptability, economic characteristics, requirements, safety and technical specific property. The results of the included studies indicated that, most assessments focused on just one aspect, and were lack of comprehensive evaluation. The indexes used in each assessment covered a far too wide range, and was lack of unified index and standards. Conclusion Current studies show that the fields of appropriate health technology assessment distribute widely; the assessment content is simple and lack of comprehensive evaluation; the assessment index system has no unified standard; and the study design methods are different and lack of high quality study design. So it is necessary to conduct high quality assessment studies, establish scientific assessment index system, and systematically assess appropriate health technology, so as to provide more scientific basis for health decision makers.
Objective To investigate the rebuilding status of community health service (CHS) system after Wenchuan earthquake in Mianzhu, improve service ability and provide data for better reconstruction of CHS system after natural disaster. Methods The interview was conducted with local health system officials, and self-designed questionnaire for face-to-face interview was distributed to 508 community residents in Mianzhu who were selected by convenience sampling. Data entry and statistical analysis were completed using Microsoft Office Excel 2007 and SPSS 16.0 respectively. Results A total of 508 questionnaires were distributed, and then 486 questionnaires were retrieved effectively (response rate 95.7%). The analysis on 486 respondents in CHS after rebuilding showed the rate of respondents with health files rose from 20.1% to 43.8%, the rate of having regular health check-up rose from 7.4% to 46.7%, the rate of health education rose from 20.1% to 39.7%, the rate of chronic disease monitoring rose from 0.9% to 35.4%, the rate of knowing referral pattern rose from 15.7% to 51.2%, the rate of propaganda for disaster relief rose from 33.6% to 58.6%, and the rate of doing disaster emergency response exercise was 21.8% currently. 62.3% of residents chose CHS on the first visit. The satisfactory degree to CHS rose from 45.4% to 76.1% after earthquake. Both popularization of regular health check-up and propaganda for disaster relief were major factors with influence on residents’ satisfaction to CHS (Plt;0.001, P=0.010, respectively). Conclusion The residents’ satisfactory degree to the rebuilding status of CHS system is encouraging. It is necessary to strengthen the popularization of regular health check-up and propaganda for disaster relief in order to improve the quality of community health service.