Page 80 - A Widening Idea of Health and Health Research - The South African Medical Research Council from Creation to COVID

Positively into the New South Africa: The MRC, 1995–2012

Health Awareness Day organized by the Chronic Diseases of Lifestyle Research Unit
at Bishop Lavis, 2010. A local resident is having her blood pressure taken while in the
background a poster urges people to ‘Stay Tobacco Free’.

another was critical for reshaping it, which is what the new field of US-style health
systems research, as pioneered by CERSA, promised. Typically, it focused on particular
obstacles to effective health care, identified their systemic source and recommended
solutions. Given the deeply fragmented nature of the apartheid health system,
integration within a district-based primary health-care framework underpinned its
general approach, which articulated well with the new South Africa’s health policies.
It felt that its mission, especially in the early years of the young democracy, was akin to
that of its close associate, the Health Policy Research Unit, of which a long-time staffer

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