Gianfranco Domenighetti, economist and doctor of social sciences, was born in Lugano on 13 April 1942 and died at the age of 75 on 17 November 2017 in Locarno.
After completing his studies in economics and social sciences at the University of Fribourg, he began his professional activity in 1969 at the Department of Social Affairs of the Ticino Canton (today Department of Public Health and Welfare). He was for 37 years, until 2007, the director of the Health Care Division of this Department and director of the summer Academy in health services administration and management (in collaboration with the University of Montréal. He was a member on several technical, scientific and political committees actively engaged in the socio-health field at a national and international level. He also served as a consultant for the World Health Organization (WHO) and as an interim consultant for the Council of Europe. He ran 14 education and cooperation programs in South-Eastern Europe within the scope of economic cooperation and development projects sponsored by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (cf. “Government Official”).
After taking his PhD in social sciences, concomitantly with his activity in the cantonal Administration, he was also a professor at the Universities of Geneva, Lausanne and Lugano, where he taught health policy and economics (cf. “Academic”).
The recipient of many awards and honors in the field of research and health promotion, he published over 330 papers and scientific reports, including two books. The main fields of research and interest include the impact of information on client-patient preferences and behaviors, the empowerment-service demand effect, the impact of working conditions on health, as well as the future of “universal” healthcare systems and appropriateness (Choosing Wisely) in medicine. Throughout his lucid and documented scientific analyses, always conducted through an economist’s eyes and without invading the field of clinicians, Gianfranco Domenighetti was able to track down the virtues and, above all, the contradictions of the various systems related to medicine, thus becoming an authoritative voice at an international level, too. (cf. “Scientific publications” and “Government Official”).
He wrote many popular articles and took part in interviews and press reports published in a dozen newspapers of the Italian-speaking area of Switzerland and in the Swiss press at large, created posters and TV commercials for the Canton of Ticino concerning both his health promotion job as the Director of the Canton’s Health Care Division and the evolving stances taken in the public debate. Reviewing this vast material is a way to go over almost forty years of health policy. (cf. “Not just press review”).