Acknowledgements

This volume is one of a series of books produced by the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies. We are immensely grateful to all the authors for their hard work and enthusiasm in this study, and to Isabel de la Mata, Jean-Luc af Geijerstam and Dr Hans Henri P. Kluge for contributing the Forewords.

In addition to the authors (see List of contributors), we gratefully acknowledge the contributions of those who participated in a policy roundtable held in Stockholm in March 2017, to discuss contents, direction and individual draft chapters of the volume. These were: Sevim Barbasso-Helmers, Ann Catrine Eldh, Björn Hansell, Kaisa Immonen, Stefan Jutterdal, Bodil Klintberg, Fredrik Lennartsson, Johanna Lind, Tove Lindahl Greve, Veronika Lindberg, Lisbeth Löpare, Maria Montefusco, Stig Nyman, Sara Riggare, Ingrid Schmidt, and Kajsa Westling.The roundtable discussions provided an invaluable source for guiding this work further and improving its overall relevance to policy.

The information presented reflects the evidence as it stood in the spring of 2018. We would further like to thank the reviewers of individual chapters for all their comments and suggestions, which further enhanced the quality of the work. These were: Paula Blomqvist, Paul Buchanan, Sibylle Erdmann, Dominick Frosch, Tamara Hervey, Anya de Iongh, Karen Jones, Danny van Leeuwen, Cristin Lind, Maria Montefusco, Šarunas Narbutas, Catherine Needham, Jennie Popay, Sara Riggare, Sophie Staniszewska, Sarah Thomson and Sue Ziebland. We also gratefully acknowledge the time taken by the final reviewers of this volume, Dr Ann Catrine Eldh, and Professor Mike Dent. We greatly benefited from their very helpful comments and suggestions.

We are especially grateful to the Swedish Agency for Health and Care Services Analysis (Vårdanalys) for co-funding this study, and in particular to Johanna Lind (now Lumell Associates), Hanna Sjöberg, Kajsa Westling and Fredrik Lennartsson (now Director of Health and Care, Region Skane) for their continued collaboration and support, patience and enthusiasm from the inception of this study to its final publication.

Finally, this book would not have appeared without the able and patient support throughout the project of our colleagues in the Observatory. In particular, we would like to thank Celine Démaret and Annalisa Marianecci who helped manage all administrative matters related to this work, including the organization of the author workshop in Stockholm. We are also very grateful to Jonathan North and Caroline White for managing the production process and to Sarah Cook for copy-editing the manuscript.