Dr. Yuval Arbel (p), Dr. Israel Rachevski, Mrs. Yeela Kerner, Dr. Miryam Kerner

This study examines the correlation between municipal tax discount applications and the socio-economic status (SES) of 28 settlements in northern Israel, utilizing household data from 2011 to 2023. Employing quadratic regression to allow for non-linear relationships, the findings indicate that in settlements with low to medium SES rankings (3-5), municipalities should enhance support and education to improve residents' medical and financial literacy, addressing the underutilization of available benefits. However, these municipalities often face resource constraints that limit their capacity to assist. In contrast, higher SES settlements benefit from residents' increased literacy, facilitating successful applications. The study suggests government intervention, such as engaging student volunteers, to bolster medical literacy and support in lower SES areas, ensuring broader access to rights and services.

Mr Yashvant Premchand (p), Dr. Thomas De Graaff, Prof. Dr. Henri De Groot

Economic debates on societal progress increasingly move beyond GDP toward broader welfare frameworks that incorporate economic, social, and environmental dimensions of well-being. While these frameworks provide rich descriptive insights, much less is known about how households value different welfare dimensions and whether these valuations vary across space. This paper investigates which welfare dimensions people value most and how these preferences differ regionally, using detailed spatial data for the Netherlands. We combine a comprehensive set of welfare indicators, covering income, employment, health, accessibility, safety, and environmental quality, with newly developed indicators capturing climate-related exposure such as floods, land subsidence, and heat stress. These environmental dimensions are often underrepresented in existing welfare-beyond-GDP frameworks. Our empirical analysis exploits spatial variation in land values to infer households’ implicit willingness to pay for different welfare dimensions. In line with spatial equilibrium theory, land values capitalize local amenities and disamenities, reflecting aggregated residential preferences. First, we map the spatial distribution of broader welfare indicators across regions, revealing substantial regional heterogeneity. Environmental and climate exposure indicators display particularly strong spatial variation. Second, we estimate hedonic regressions of land values on welfare indicators to identify which dimensions are most strongly capitalized into prices. Our results show that economic dimensions are valued most strongly on average. By linking broader welfare indicators to revealed preferences in housing markets, this paper contributes to the measurement of regional welfare and offers new insights into the spatial trade-offs underlying residential location preferences. The findings have direct implications for regional policy and climate adaptation, as welfare-beyond-GDP frameworks increasingly inform spatial decision-making. Yet without evidence on which dimensions households actually value, such policies risk misallocating resources across regions with fundamentally different welfare trade-offs.

Dr. İsrafil Boyaci (p)

This article aims to provide an examination of the two region-based health policies together in Türkiye’s transformed healthcare delivery system from the 2010s onwards, with the completion of Türkiye’s Health Transformation Program 2003-2013. The article reviews these two current nationwide health policy implementations together to highlight their long-term and complementary roles in transforming Türkiye's healthcare system into a sustainable and integrated healthcare delivery model.
Türkiye’s nationwide implementations of region-based planning-driven health policy have the potential to reinforce and strengthen universal healthcare coverage by improving geographic coverage in addition to financial coverage that has achieved through the implementation of universal public insurance coverage with Türkiye’s Health Transformation Program (HTP) reforms in the 2010s. With a reflective description of the transformation of Türkiye’s health system towards an integrated healthcare system over the past two decades, this article contributes to the health policy discussions in the literature about integrated health services from the health service supply side.
The practice of Health Service Areas and City Hospitals projects can help ensure equal access to quality healthcare for all citizens and reduce regional inequalities in access and availability of healthcare resources, under the condition of well-coordination and integration across the levels of care and intersectoral collaboration. Beyond integration in terms of organization, a holistic ‘whole person health’ approach, with continuity of care, effective referral, and patient data management, can guarantee a healthy population in a sustained way. This perspective is a strong candidate to lead the next generation of Türkiye's health system reforms focused on long-term, sustainable health-for-everyone policies.
As implications for policymakers and the public perspective, the article offers insightful reflections about issues relevant to every country’s health system and health policy. Although the analysis is grounded in the specific country experience of Türkiye, the conceptual framework and policy implications extend beyond national borders to contribute to fruitful reflections and discussions about various issues in healthcare policies that are applicable to any particular national health system across the globe. The article has the potential stimulate further discussion and policy actions in the implementation of a holistic integrated care approach.

Dr. Javier Lera (p), Dra Marina Barreda,, Prof Dr David Cantarero, Prof Dra Marta Pascual

Background. Housing affordability pressure is increasingly recognised as a structural driver of health inequalities, yet its territorial impacts may be highly uneven. In segmented rental markets, rent shocks can concentrate in specific dwelling types, generating unequal exposure to affordability stress and potentially widening regional gaps in mental health over time. This paper examines whether rental price dynamics are associated with changes in mental health prevalence across Spanish Autonomous Communities (CCAA), and whether these associations differ across market segments and territories.
Methods. We assemble a longitudinal panel for Spain’s CCAA covering 2011–2023, combining housing price indices from INE with region-level measures of mental health prevalence from administrative records from the Spanish National Health System. The main explanatory variables are annual changes in rental price indices, modelled contemporaneously and with lags to capture delayed effects. To proxy unequal exposure within regional rental markets, rent changes are analysed separately by dwelling size (small, medium and large units). Our empirical strategy includes socioeconomic and demographic controls, region and time effects, and specifications that account for regional heterogeneity and interregional dependence.
Results. Rental price increases are associated with modest but statistically significant rises in mental health prevalence, with effects emerging mainly with a delay. The association is substantially stronger for small and medium-sized dwellings, while rent changes for larger dwellings show no robust relationship. Estimated effects also vary across regions, pointing to marked territorial heterogeneity in vulnerability to rental price shocks.
Conclusions. The findings suggest that regional mental health is shaped not only by overall rental market trends but also by the segment-specific incidence of rent inflation, reinforcing housing affordability as a determinant of territorial health inequalities. From a policy perspective, results support more integrated regional strategies that coordinate housing affordability instruments with mental health prevention and service planning, with particular attention to regions and market segments most exposed to rent shocks.