Shifra Shvarts

Shifra Shvarts (born in 1949) is a researcher of the history of medicine, and a Professor Emerita at the Center for Medical Education within the Faculty of Health Sciences at Ben-Gurion University. She also serves as the deputy director-general of the International Society for the History of Medicine. Her research examines the history and development of health services in Israel and the history of public medicine.

Shifra Shvarts
Shifra Shvarts in 2008.

Biography

Shifra Shvarts (originally Shifra Leider-Shvarts) was born in 1949 in Tel Aviv, Israel, to Yeheskel Leider and Batia Ben Ephraim, and was raised in Ashkelon and from 1961 in Beer Sheva. At Ben-Gurion University, she completed a BA in history and geography, an MA in history, and a PhD in health sciences.[1] Between 1993–1994, at the medical school of the University of Rochester in New York state, she completed post-doctoral studies in the field of the history of health and management of health systems.

Since 1995, Shvarts has been a member of the Faculty of Health Sciences at Ben-Gurion University.[1] During the years 1996–1998, she served as chair of the Israel Society for the History of Medicine, and she has since fulfilled key functions in its activities.[2] From 2001–2004, Shvarts served as director of the Department of Health System Management. Since 2002, she has been a member of The Israel National Institute For Health Policy Research at the Gertner Institute for Epidemiology and Health Policy Research, located at the Sheba Medical Center in Ramat Gan.[3] From 2004, Shvarts has been a faculty member of the Health Sciences Faculty’s Center for Medical Education at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

Between 2006–2017, in addition to being a full professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences, Shvarts also served as a researcher at the Gertner Institute.[4] The majority of her research at Gertner focused on the development of health services in Israel, and public health issues during the first decade of Israeli statehood, with special emphasis on the organized treatment of ringworm with irradiation in Israel and worldwide.

In 2008, Shvarts was elected to serve as deputy director-general of the International Society for the History of Medicine. In 2014, she was made vice president of the society and coordinator of the editorial board of its scientific journal Vesalius.[5]

Academic Research Activities

Professor Shvarts is considered a founding pioneer in the history of the Israeli health system as a research field. The central thesis of her research relates to the importance of recognizing the social, cultural, historical, and organizational roots of the health system as a key to understanding its present-day operation. In particularly, she has studied the growth of the salaried physician model in Israel, and the steps towards legislation of a compulsory health insurance law in 1994.[6] Her research has yielded new and important insights into how the health system functions, and her work has been broadly cited and quoted in the Amora’i Commission Report addressing the regulation of physicians’ work in the public health system in Israel.[7]

In recognition of her scholarly work and her contributions to the development and advancement of research in the health services domain, in 2002, Shvarts was elected to the directorship of The Israel National Institute For Health Policy Research.[8]

Shvarts has written four books and co-authored dozens of volumes and over 140 papers and book chapters. All of these works deal with various aspects of the history of health system organization in Israel. Her work Kupat Holim, Histadruth, Memshala (‘Health Fund, Labor Federation, Government’),[9] published by the Ben-Gurion Heritage Institute in 2000, was awarded the Einhorn Prize for Achievements in Hebrew Medical Literature (2003).[10] In 2005, she was awarded the Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonels – The Governor of Kentucky and the Commonwealth of Kentucky Honor Award for her "contribution to the community, state of nation and for special achievements of all kinds".[1] In 2012, her article "The Government of Israel and the Health Care of the Negev Bedouins under Military Government, 1948–1966" (Shvarts S., Borkan J., Muhammad M., Sherf M., Medical History, 47: 47–66, 2003) was selected as one of the highlights of the decade and made freely available through Cambridge University Press platforms.[11]

In her books, Shvarts presents a panoramic view of the political and organizational experience in Mandatory Palestine of the 1920s and 1930s, from the standpoint of how the Jewish community in the Land of Israel confronted the issue of health services organization.

In addition to her research on the history of health services in Israel, Shvarts has studied the changes in the health system in the State of Israel following statehood. This research focuses on the need for health system changes after the establishment of the state, and the elements involved.[12] These studies constituted the first dissection of the political and economic forces that influenced health-related decision-making in Israeli society—including the Israeli government, the health funds, the General Federation of Labor, the Physicians’ Medical Federation, and the Nurses’ Federation.[3] Shvarts’s analyses elucidate how each of these entities acted to preserve its status as an underlying principle in every one of the central issues that stood on the public agenda in Israel, e.g., the absorption of immigrant physicians, the Compulsory National Health Insurance Law, the Nurses’ Law, Mothers’ Insurance, and Mother & Child Health Services (called “Milk Drop”, in Hebrew).[13]

During the past decade, Shvarts has focused her research on how various countries worldwide,[14] and Israel in particular, have dealt with the issue of irradiation treatment for ringworm, as well as the latent health and social aspects of this treatment as expressed in the legislation of the Law for Compensation of Ringworm Victims in Israel. Parallel to this, she has performed a historical-academic evaluation of the practical impact of the Compulsory National Health Insurance Law 1994 on the Israeli health system.[15]

Selected Works
  • Shvarts S., Kupat- Holim Haclalit, The General Sick Fund, 1911-1937, Ben-Gurion Institute and Ben-Gurion University Press, 1997 (Hebrew, 221 pages).
  • Shvarts S., Kupat Holim, The Histadruth and the Government, Ben-Gurion University Press and Beith Berl Press 2000 (Hebrew ,288 pages).
  • Shvarts S., The Workers' Health Fund in Eretz Israel, The University of Rochester NY and Boydell & Brewer Press, UK.
  • Shehory-Rubin Z., Shvarts S., "Hadassah" for the Health of the People, Hasifria Hazionit, Jerusalem, 2003 (Hebrew, 222 pages),
  • Doron H., Shvarts S., Medicine in the Community, Ben-Gurion University Press, 2004 (Hebrew, 264 pages).
  • Shvarts S., Health and Zionism, The University of Rochester NY and Boydell & Brewer Press, UK, 2008 (322 pages).
  • Shehory-Rubin Z., Shvarts S., "Hadassah" for the Health of the People, Jerusalem, 2012 (Dekel Academic Press, 296 pages).
  • Shehory-Rubin Z., Shvarts S., Alexandra Belkind: A Story of a Pioneering Jewish Woman Doctor, Bahur Pub., 2012 (Hebrew,157 pages).
  • Doron H., Shvarts S., Vinker S., Family Medicine in Israel, Ben-Gurion University Publication & the Bialik Institute, 2014 (Hebrew, 204 pages).
  • Stoler-Liss, Shvarts. S., Shani M., To Be a Healthy Nation, Ben-Gurion University Publication & the Bialik Institute, 2016 (Hebrew, 338 pages).
  • Bar Oz Y., Bin Nun G., Shvarts S., The Israeli Health Care System on the Operating Table - 25 years to the implementation of the National Health Insurance Law, The National Institute of Health Policy Research Publication, 2019 (Hebrew, 300 pages).

Editorship of collective volumes:

  • Chinitz D., Cohen J. (editors), Doron H., Ofer G., Shvarts S., Simchin E. (contributing editors), Government and Health Systems, Implications of Differing Involvements, John Wiley & Sons, 1998 (623 pages).
  • Jotkowitz A., Shvarts S., Autonomy, Altruism and Authority in Medical Ethics: Essays in Honor of Professor Shimon Glick,, Nova Science Publishers Inc. NY, 2015 (205 pages).
  • Shvarts S., Sadetzki S., Ringworm - Historical, Medical and Social Aspects of Its Treatment , Ben-Gurion University Publication, May 2018 (585 pages).
  • Shvarts S., Bennun G., Haim Doron – My Way in the Health Care System- Conversations and Memories, Ben-Gurion University Publication. March 2019 (140 pages).

References
  1. "Shifra Shvarts". Ben-Gurion University.
  2. "ההסתדרות הרפואית בישראל | מייסדי והוגי רעיון המסע". www.ima.org.il. Retrieved 2021-01-23.
  3. "המכון הלאומי לחקר שרותי הבריאות ומדיניות הבריאות" (in Hebrew). Retrieved 2021-01-23.
  4. "Shifra Shvarts – Nova Science Publishers". Retrieved 2021-01-23.
  5. "ISHM Revue Vesalius". www.biusante.parisdescartes.fr. Retrieved 2021-01-23.
  6. "shvarts shifra - Search Results - PubMed". PubMed. Retrieved 2021-01-23.
  7. "ההסתדרות הרפואית בישראל | דוח ועדת אמוראי לבחינת הרפואה הציבורית ומעמד הרופא בה – תשסג-2002". www.ima.org.il. Retrieved 2021-01-23.
  8. "המכון הלאומי לחקר שרותי הבריאות ומדיניות הבריאות" (in Hebrew). Retrieved 2021-01-23.
  9. Shvarts, Shifra (2008). Health and Zionism: The Israeli Health Care System, 1948–1960. Boydell & Brewer. ISBN 978-1-58046-279-2.
  10. "פרס איינהורן", ויקיפדיה (in Hebrew), 2020-03-28, retrieved 2021-01-23
  11. Shvarts, Shifra; Borkan, Jefrey; Morad, Mohamad; Sherf, Michael (January 2003). "The Government of Israel and the Health Care of the Negev Bedouin under Military Government, 1948–1966". Medical History. 47 (1): 47–66. doi:10.1017/S0025727300000077. ISSN 2048-8343. PMC 1044764. PMID 12617020.
  12. Grinstein, Orli; Elhayany, Asher; Goldberg, Avishay; Shvarts, Shifra (August 2002). "Complementary medicine in Israel". Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine (New York, N.Y.). 8 (4): 437–443. doi:10.1089/107555302760253630. ISSN 1075-5535. PMID 12230904.
  13. "מערך טיפות החלב בסכנת קריסה". Haaretz הארץ (in Hebrew). Retrieved 2021-01-23.
  14. Shvarts, Shifra; Romem, Pnina; Romem, Yitzhak; Shani, Mordechai (April 2013). "The mass campaign to eradicate ringworm among the Jewish community in Eastern Europe, 1921-1938". American Journal of Public Health. 103 (4): e56–66. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2012.301020. ISSN 1541-0048. PMC 3673251. PMID 23409897.
  15. Bar Oz, Y.; Bin Nun, G.; Shvarts, S. (2019). The Israeli healthcare system on the operating table: 25 years since implementation of the national health insurance law (in Hebrew). The National Institute of Health Policy Research Publication.
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