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The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the urgency of better chronic disease management and the importance of making it an integral part of the recovery agenda in Europe. This paper aims to explore the shift towards digital and integrated care systems in Europe.

In this viewpoint paper the Expert Group for Integrated Care and Digital Health Europe (EGIDE) group argues that an orchestrated shift towards integrated care holds the solution to the chronic disease pandemic.

The development of integrated care cannot happen without shifting towards a digitalised healthcare system via large-scale initiatives like the European Health Data Space (EHDS) and the involvement of all stakeholders.

The EGIDE group has identified some foundational principles, which can guide the way to realise the full potential of the EHDS for integrated care and can support the involved stakeholders’ thinking.

Community‐based participatory research (CBPR) has been shown to improve aspects of health promotion initiatives. This case study examines the effects of a CBPR intervention on intermediate outcomes (changes in the community) related to preventing health disparities and chronic disease. We describe how the Kansas City‐Chronic Disease Coalition used CBPR methods to help bring about community changes to reduce risk for cardiovascular diseases and diabetes among African Americans and Hispanics in Kansas City, Missouri. Using an empirical case study design, communities and scientific partners documented and analyzed the contribution of community changes (new or modified programs, policies or practices) facilitated by the coalition in two racial/ethnic communities: African American and Hispanic. Follow‐up interviews suggest that the coalition did a better job of implementing a CBPR intervention in the African American community than in the Hispanic community. Challenges to implementing CBPR interventions in multiple and diverse ethnic communities are discussed.

Purpose – This chapter frames the topic of organizing for sustainable health care in terms of the environmental trends that have rendered current health care approaches unsustainable, the embeddedness of health care in society's triple bottom line, and the need to build adaptive capability within the complex health care ecosystem.

Design/methodology/approach – We synthesize documented trends and empirical findings regarding the viability of current approaches to health care, and provide a theoretically framed treatment of the adaptation process in the complex health care system that can lead to the emergence of sustainable approaches.

Findings – There is a misfit between current approaches to delivering health care and the requirements and trends in contemporary society. Fundamental transformation is required that entails a broadening of purpose, a future orientation, and a rethinking of how health care adds value and how it is embedded in society.

Originality/value – By reconceptualizing health care reform as intricately related to societal sustainability and the triple bottom line, we open the possibility of transcending a narrow focus on reengineering to create more efficient organizations and work processes that consume fewer resources and deliver greater value. We invite health care practitioners and scholars to rethink all the connections in the health care ecosystem, and the need to build in self-organizing capabilities and adaptive capacity. The cases in this book provide knowledge from systems engaged in fundamental transformation, analyzed through the lenses of theoretical frameworks that help us better understand essential dynamics involved in creating sustainable health care systems.

The purpose of this study is to examine knowledge and perceptions of risk surrounding chronic inflammatory diseases (CIDs) and intergenerational development, as well as practices used to acquire CID information among unaffected first- and second-generation South Asian immigrant parents and children in the Greater Toronto Area, Ontario.

Fifty-four in-depth interviews with parents and children (18 parents, 36 children) were conducted by trained facilitators, recorded, transcribed and analyzed qualitatively.

Findings reveal that although CIDs disproportionately affect South Asian immigrants, this group has low knowledge and awareness of CID symptoms, risk factors and conditions. Yet when equipped with some knowledge about CIDs, participants linked their increased risk of CIDs to perceived risks in their broader environments such as climate variations, pollution, unhealthy food environments and health system neglect, that although yearning to change these factors, felt unable to modify their risks as factors were beyond their control. Although information is critical to manage CIDs, the findings reveal important and divergent knowledge pathways and practices used among first- and second-generation parents and children, particularly related to health-care settings and academic resources, underscoring generational disparities in knowledge acquisition.

The findings suggest that a multi-sector, multi-tiered approach built around a series of structural interventions, programs and policy changes is needed to address CID knowledge and awareness gaps and entrenched culturally insensitive health care to create more equitable access to healthy, safe and responsive environments and care systems for CID management.

This paper aims to explore how the TECH Model (testing for and treating infectious diseases and vaccination; environmental modification to prevent disease transmission; chronic disease identification and treatment; and health maintenance and education) can be used for assessing and achieving healthy prisons.

This paper explores the concepts of “health in prison” and “healthy prisons” in the context of recent research and guidance. The paper then considers the TECH Model as an approach to achieving healthy prisons.

Under each of the four TECH Model domains are tasks to achieve a healthy prison. For prisons with poor or no resources, each domain contains steps that will improve prison health and move towards a healthy prison for both prisoners and staff. Implementation can thus be “low‐TECH” or “high‐TECH” depending on the setting and the available resources and the model is specifically designed to provide options for resource‐poor as well as resource‐rich correctional settings.

The TECH Model is a first step in characterizing the components of a healthy prison and the processes to achieve this. This Model could be implemented in all levels of prisons internationally.

This review aims to document the influence of low glycaemic index (LGI) and low glycaemic load (LGL) foods over food satiety, their utilisation in clinical practice, and their importance in the prevention and control of diseases such as obesity, diabetes and cardiopathies. It also aims to discuss the inclusion of glycaemic index (GI) information in food labels as an important tool for the consumer who wishes to make healthier choices.

An extensive literature search was conducted in the Web of Science, Pub Med and Medline databases, as well as in reference lists from the scientific articles retrieved in the search.

Most of the articles presented similar results regarding the substitution of high glycaemic index (HGI) foods for low GI ones. In diabetics there was an improvement in the glycaemic and lipid profiles control, and in the obese, weight reduction and reduced cardiovascular complications risk were observed. Foods with higher satiety potential were identified as those with lower GIs, which reduce appetite, cause less glycaemic oscillations in diabetics, and lower caloric intake in the obese.

This revision evidenced the benefits of LGI foods over satiety and palatability, and discussed their effect in the treatment of chronic non‐transmissible diseases such as obesity and diabetes.

Gives a description of the changes in food consumption patterns and the incidence of disease which has stimulated scientific investigations into the relationship between diet and development of chronic diseases. Explains the emergence of a consensus among scientists, coupled with a discussion of how the dietary recommendations have been received in different countries.

This study seeks to provide an examination of a health policy network operating in a single, small community along the US‐Mexican border. The purpose of the paper is to discuss why and how this network evolved, and then to present findings on how the network was structured. Analysis will focus especially on agency involvement, or “embeddedness” in the network, and its relationship to attitudes held by network members regarding trust, reputation, and perceived benefit.

Data were collected from 15 public and nonprofit agencies trying to work collaboratively to influence local policy and services regarding the prevention of obesity‐related chronic disease, especially diabetes. Embeddedness was measured in three different ways and both confirmed and unconfirmed networks were assessed. Network analysis methods were utilized as well as nonparametric correlation statistics.

The network was found to be densely connected through unconfirmed linkages, but much less so when these links were confirmed. Strongest findings were found for shared information. Measures of agency embeddedness in the network were strong predictors of agency reputation, but findings for trust and perceived benefit were generally weak.

From a practice perspective, the study points to the problems in building and sustaining community‐based chronic disease health networks, especially in a small community with substantial health needs. The research also contributes to theory on embeddedness and to methodology for collecting and analyzing data on community health networks.

This study investigated two key aspects: (1) how a hospital bundles limited resources for preventive care performance and (2) how to develop IS capabilities to enhance preventive care performance.

A case study method was adopted to examine how a hospital integrates its limited resources which leads to the need for resource bundles and an understanding of IS capabilities development to understand how they contribute to the delivery of preventive care in a Malaysian hospital.

This research proposes a comprehensive framework outlining resource-bundling and IS capabilities development to improve preventive care.

We acknowledge that the problem of transferring and generalizing results has been a common criticism of a single case study. However, our objective was to enhance the reader’s understanding by including compelling, detailed narratives demonstrating how our research results offer practical examples that can be generalized theoretically. The findings also apply to similar-sized public hospitals in Malaysia and other developing countries, facing challenges like resource constraints, HIS adoption levels, healthcare workforce shortages, cultural and linguistic diversity, bureaucratic hurdles, and specific patient demographics and health issues. Further, lessons from this context can be usefully applied to non-healthcare service sector domains.

This study provides a succinct strategy for enhancing preventive care in Malaysian public hospitals, focusing on system integration and alignment with hospital strategy, workforce diversity through recruitment and mentorship, and continuous training for health equity and inclusivity. This approach aims to improve resource efficiency, communication, cultural competence, and healthcare outcomes.

Efficiently using limited resources through HIS investment is essential to improve preventive care and reduce chronic diseases, which cause approximately nine million deaths annually in Southeast Asia, according to WHO. This issue has significantly impacted the socioeconomic development of developing countries.

This research refines resource orchestration theory with new mechanisms for resource mobilization, extends IS literature by identifying how strategic bundling forms specialized healthcare IS capabilities, enriches preventive care literature through actionable resource-bundling activities, and adds to HIS literature by advocating for an integrated, preventive care focus from the alignment of HIS design, people and institutional policies to address concerns raised by other research regarding the utilization of HIS in improving the quality of preventive care.