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Research on quality adjusted life year (QALY) has been underway for just over 50 years, which seems like a suitable milestone to review its history. The purpose of this study is to provide a historical overview of why the QALY was developed, the key theoretical work undertaken by Torrance, Bush and Fanshel and how two seminal papers shaped its subsequent development. Moving the QALY forward – there are several historical and reflective exercises. The historical interplay between politics, policy and the challenges facing the National Health Service (NHS) in formulating the QALY concept in the UK has been explored in some depth already, whilst the conceptualization and development of the methodological framework is relatively underexplored. We address this gap by viewing the QALY through the lens of the methodological debates, reflecting upon two key papers underpinning the QALY methodology and how these methods have been developed over time. In part the changes in technology e.g. Google Scholar, and the availability of tools to search for early uses of the QALY allow us to better understand the historical context in which the theoretical development of the QALY has taken place. Here we celebrate two seminal papers that shaped early QALY development. The first section provides a history of these papers, summaries their contributions and explores the uptake of these papers over time. The second section reviews the methodological debates that have surrounded the QALY over the last 50 years and looks at how the QALY has moved to address these challenges. The third section presents the voices of diverse commentators representing the field of health economics who have contributed to the subsequent development of the QALY in both theoretical and empirical capacities and captures their thoughts about future research and policy use of QALYS. • Two seminal papers from North America define the QALY we know today. • Systematic searches identified 716 papers citing both these seminal papers. • Co-citation analysis and visualisations highlight a range of methodological topics. • Behavioural theories are shown to inform research into how we get the numbers. • Research is also needed on what the numbers mean and what aspects to incorporate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: High levels of excess mortality (i.e. that not explained by deprivation) have been observed for Scotland compared with England & Wales, and especially for Glasgow in comparison with similar post-industrial cities such as Liverpool and Manchester. Many potential explanations have been suggested. Based on an assessment of these, the aim was to develop an understanding of the most likely underlying causes. Note that this paper distils a larger research report, with the aim of reaching wider audiences beyond Scotland, as the important lessons learnt are relevant to other populations. Study design: Review and dialectical synthesis of evidence. Methods: Forty hypotheses were examined, including those identified from a systematic review. The relevance of each was assessed by means of Bradford Hill's criteria for causality alongside--for hypotheses deemed causally linked to mortality--comparisons of exposures between Glasgow and Liverpool/Manchester, and between Scotland and the rest of Great Britain. Where gaps in the evidence base were identified, new research was undertaken. Causal chains of relevant hypotheses were created, each tested in terms of its ability to explain the many different aspects of excess mortality. The models were further tested with key informants from public health and other disciplines. Results: In Glasgow's case, the city was made more vulnerable to important socioeconomic (deprivation, deindustrialisation) and political (detrimental economic and social policies) exposures, resulting in worse outcomes. This vulnerability was generated by a series of historical factors, processes and decisions: the lagged effects of historical overcrowding; post-war regional policy including the socially selective relocation of population to outside the city; more detrimental processes of urban change which impacted on living conditions; and differences in local government responses to UK government policy in the 1980s which both impacted in negative terms in Glasgow and also conferred protective effects on comparator cities. Further resulting protective factors were identified (e.g. greater 'social capital' in Liverpool) which placed Glasgow at a further relative disadvantage. Other contributory factors were highlighted, including the inadequate measurement of deprivation. A similar 'explanatory model' resulted for Scotland as a whole. This included: the components of the Glasgow model, given their impact on nationally measured outcomes; inadequate measurement of deprivation; the lagged effects of deprivation (in particular higher levels of overcrowding historically); and additional key vulnerabilities. Conclusions: The work has helped to further understanding of the underlying causes of Glasgow's and Scotland's high levels of excess mortality. The implications for policy include the need to address three issues simultaneously: to protect against key exposures (e.g. poverty) which impact detrimentally across all parts of the UK; to address the existing consequences of Glasgow's and Scotland's vulnerability; and to mitigate against the effects of future vulnerabilities which are likely to emerge from policy responses to contemporary problems which fail sufficiently to consider and to prevent long-term, unintended social consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The Finnish Baby Box provides parents of newborns with a wide range of infant clothing and other basics. • The cardboard box in which the infant can sleep was emphasized by the media and commercial companies outside Finland. • The box preventing SIDS was advanced by private companies and the media. • This was less the case in Wales and Scotland, a result of their being governed by authorities with a "left" orientation. For over 80 years the Finnish state has provided expectant mothers with a cardboard box containing an extensive collection of clothing, bathing products for the baby, nappies, bedding and a small mattress. Numerous jurisdictions have implemented it in some form. We investigated through a critical case study methodology whether its translation into the liberal welfare states of Canada, UK, and USA experienced message distortion (the box as a means of preventing SIDS), commercialization, watering down of content; and separation from the complex of Finnish welfare state policies that support families with children. We find that only Scotland and Wales recognized the decommodification and equity roles played by the baby box. This study identified numerous barriers to building progressive public policy in Canada, UK, and USA: the structures and processes of the liberal welfare state, commercial interests that skew public policymaking and media logic that limits news reporting to the concrete and simple, eschewing complex analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1845, Friedrich Engels identified how the living and working conditions experienced by English workers sent them prematurely to the grave, arguing that those responsible for these conditions -- ruling authorities and the bourgeoisie -- were committing social murder. The concept remained, for the most part, dormant in academic journals through the 1900s. Since 2000, there has been a revival of the social murder concept with its growth especially evident in the UK over the last decade as a result of the Grenfell Tower Fire and the effects of austerity imposed by successive Conservative governments. The purpose of this paper is to document the reemergence of the concept of social murder in academic journal articles. To do so we conducted a scoping review of content applying the social murder concept since 1900 in relation to health and well-being. We identified two primary concepts of social murder: social murder as resulting from capitalist exploitation and social murder as resulting from bad public policy across the domains of working conditions, living conditions, poverty, housing, race, health inequalities, crime and violence, neoliberalism, gender, food, social assistance, deregulation and austerity. We consider reasons for the reemergence of Engels' social murder concept and the role it can play in resisting the forces responsible for the living and working conditions that kill. • In 1845 Engels saw the health effects of capitalist exploitation as social murder. • The term was rarely applied in academic journals through the 20th century. • The early 1970s saw it being used to explain adverse health outcomes. • Since 2010, an exponential increase has been driven by developments in the UK. • These developments include the Grenfell Tower Fire and imposition of austerity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]