Health systems have long been considered key determinants of well-being within modern societies, a valuable resource which have faced a series of reform initiatives throughout the past decades. These reforms have been used to manage the cost of development, measure the tenability of health systems in globalizing economies and promote the increasing importance of health problems related to lifestyle and living conditions, yet they have failed to provide a true resolution to the persistent economical and logistical problems facing modern-day health systems.

This rich, interdisciplinary work explores the hypothesis that many of these problems cannot be adequately addressed without structural changes to our health systems, and examines the embedded features of our health systems that underlie contemporary challenges as well as how, and under what conditions, our health systems can be made more sustainable. Combining and building upon theoretical approaches from transition and innovation studies for analysing health system deficits, Toward Sustainable Transitions in Healthcare Systems raises fundamental questions about how new research, new needs and exogenous trends are transforming current health innovation systems.

Providing an original and substantial analysis of the complex structural features of the health innovation system, this book will be of interest to students and practitioners of the politics of health, social epidemiology, medical sociology and those with an interest in transition theory.

Damon Barrett is a senior lecturer in human rights at the School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. He is Co-Director of the International Centre on Human Rights and Drug Policy, based at the Human Rights Centre, University of Essex. His work has focused on what it means to adopt a human rights-based approach to drugs, with a particular focus on the rights of the child.

Rick Lines is Professor of Criminology in the Faculty of Social Sciences at Swansea University in Wales, where he is Co-Director of Global Drug Policy Observatory. He has been called ‘a key figure in the emerging field of human rights and drug policy’ and is Chair of the International Centre of Human Rights and Drug Policy at the University of Essex and author of Drug Control and Human Rights in International Law. In 2022, he joined Public Health Wales where he leads national policy, programming and research on drug use and harm reduction.