Search results

Primary care (PC) is a strong determinant of overall health care. Children make up around a fifth of the population of the European Union and European Economic Area and have their own needs and uptake of PC. However, there is little research into how well PC services address their needs. There are large differences in childhood mortality and morbidity patterns in the EU and EEA countries, and there has been a major epidemiological shift in the past half century from predominantly communicable disease, to non-communicable diseases presenting and increasingly managed in PC. This increase in multifactorial morbidities, such as obesity and learning disability, has led to the need for PC systems to adapt to accommodate these changes. Europe presents a challenging picture of unexplained variation in health care delivery and style and of children’s different health experiences and health-related behaviour. The Models of Child Health Appraised (MOCHA) project aimed to describe the PC systems in detail, analyse their components and appraise them from a number of different viewpoints, including professional, public, political and economic lenses. It did this through nine work packages supported by a core management team, and a network of national agents, individuals in each MOCHA country who had the expertise in research and knowledge of their national health care system to answer a wide range of questions posed by the MOCHA scientific teams.

As the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) continues to spread across countries, it is becoming increasingly clear that the presence of pre-existing noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) dramatically increases the risk of aggravation in persons who contract the virus. The neglect in managing NCDs during emergencies may result in fatal consequences for individuals living with comorbidities. This paper aims to highlight the need for a paradigm shift in the governance of public health emergencies to simultaneously address NCD and noncommunicable disease (CD) pandemics while taking into account the needs of high-risk populations, underlying etiological factors, and the social, economic, and environmental determinants that are relevant for both CDs and NCDs.

The paper reviews the available global frameworks for pandemic preparedness to highlight the governance challenges of addressing the dual agenda of NCDs and CDs during a public health emergency. It proposes key strategies to strengthen multilevel governance in support of countries to better prepare for public health emergencies through the engagement of a wide range of stakeholders across sectors.

Addressing both CD and NCD pandemics during public health emergencies requires (1) a new framework that unites the narratives and overcomes service and system fragmentations; (2) a multisectoral and multistakeholder governance mechanism empowered and resourced to include stakeholders across sectors and (3) a prioritized research agenda to understand the political economy of pandemics, the role played by different political systems and actors and implementation challenges, and to identify combined strategies to address the converging agendas of CDs and NCDs.

The article is based on the review of available published evidence.

The uptake of the strategies proposed will better prepare countries to respond to NCD and CD pandemics during public health emergencies.

The article is the first of its kind addressing the governance challenges of the dual pandemic of NCDs and CDs in emergencies.

The study examined the utilisation patterns of healthcare services among tea garden workers and analysed the factors influencing utilisation in an Indian context.

The authors employed a mixed-method approach and an explanatory sequential design for the study. A survey was conducted in the beginning followed by in-depth interviews in a north-eastern state of India (Assam). Andersen health behaviour model was used to explore the factors influencing healthcare utilisation. The sample size for the survey and in-depth interviews were 300 and 19, respectively, recruited employing multistage random and purposive sampling techniques.

Out of 300 workers surveyed, 169 (56.3%) were females, 257 (85.7%) were married, 77 (25.7%) were illiterates and 229 (76.3%) had monthly household income less than 100 US$. The survey also found that 47.3% and 15.3% had non-communicable and communicable disease respectively. Most of the workers (67.3%) utilised government facilities, and close to one third (28.7%) utilised tea garden hospitals. About 63.3% had health insurance, but a majority (78.9%) did not use it previously. The analyses of interviews explored the need, enabling, predisposing factors under three important themes influencing utilisation of healthcare services among the workers.

The study generates evidence to strengthen the Indian Plantation Labour Act, 1951 for tea garden worker's welfare protection and warrants transition from colonial-era policies to contemporary industry realities in order to improve their living, employment, nutritional and health conditions.

The research adds to the existing literature on overall healthcare services utilisation (including coverage and utilisation of health insurance) among blue collar workers who usually lack access to healthcare facilities and explores important factors that determine utilisation in the Indian context.

In order to assess the state of health of Europe’s children, or to appraise the systems and models of healthcare delivery, data about children are essential, with as much precision and accuracy as possible by small group characteristic. Unfortunately, the experience of the Models of Child Health Appraised (MOCHA) project and its scientists shows that this ideal is seldom met, and thus the accuracy of appraisal or planning work is compromised. In the project, we explored the data collected on children by a number of databases used in Europe and globally, to find that although the four quinquennial age bands are common, it is impossible to represent children aged 0–17 years as a legally defined group in statistical analysis. Adolescents, in particular, are the most invisible age group despite this being a time of life when they are rapidly changing and facing increasing challenges. In terms of measurement and monitoring, there is little progress from work of nearly two decades ago that recommended an information system, and no focus on the creation of a policy and ethical framework to allow collaborative analysis of the rich anonymised databases that hold real-world people-based data. In respect of data systems and surveillance, nearly all systems in European society pay lip service to the importance of children, but do not accommodate them in a practical and statistical sense.

This article examines the misinformation on the COVID-19 pandemic in social media and electronic media, as well as whether the existing legal administration and laws in Bangladesh, Singapore, and Vietnam are adequate to combat the infodemic. People who believe misinformation and fake news about Coronavirus, prevention, and treatment may put their lives in danger. False information about Coronavirus has spread throughout the world, not just in South and Southeast Asian countries, causing widespread concern in the global healthcare community. We employed a qualitative approach as well as the case study analysis method. Case studies were conducted using news reports and news channels. We examined the legal provisions of the People's Republic of Bangladesh's Constitution, as well as factual analyses of Singapore and Vietnam. We discovered the impact of misinformation dissemination through social and electronic media, which is prevalent not only among rural Bangladeshis but also in almost all classes in Singapore and Vietnam, and how such influence can be detrimental to the interests of Bangladesh, Vietnam, and Singapore.

Background: This article presents a methodology to categorize scientific publications according to the targets of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations. For the above, a dataset with bibliographic and descriptive attributes of 2,379 articles from 2017 by co-authors affiliated to the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, indexed in the Web of Science and Scopus databases, was used.

Methods: The methodology considered three relevant and consecutive milestones: establishment of the reading level that was applied for each publication record, which considers a proportional amount of information; assignment of one of the 18 categories identified for the analysis of the information, which include the 17 SDGs and the option “unclassified” and one of the 169 subcategories corresponding to the specific goals; and, finally, recording the status of the review process carried out, which allowed control of the progress and quality of the cross-review.

Results: The results show that 58.6% of the articles contribute to a primary target, of these 233 contribute to a secondary target; goals 3, 4, 9, and 11 are the most frequent in the process of assigning SDGs. There is an 81% increase in the use of alphanumeric targets when they are assigned as secondary targets. At the same time, cross-checking is shown to be beneficial when allowing the reclassification of 190 articles to some of the targets. Finally, it is established that levels 2 and 3 enabled better classification, given that the contents considered provide more information; however, it is significant that through level 1, 355 articles were categorized as “unclassified”.

Conclusions: It is concluded that the methodology allows for a conclusive, exhaustive, rigorous, extensive, and varied classification through the different milestones and actions carried out, providing strategic information for decision making and research management in the academy-society relationship.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the trend of life expectancy in Bangladesh and find the effect of eliminating the causes of diseases on life expectancy statistics.

Data consisted of 1,530 deaths in 2000, 1,582 deaths in 2004 and 1,514 deaths in 2008 that were collected from the Health and Demographic Surveillance System of International Centre for Diarrheal Disease Research, Bangladesh. Trends in life expectancy after eliminating the cause of diseases were examined by a Single Decrement Life table.

The expectation of life for both male and female presented differing patterns. Results showed that life expectancies were greatly reduced in the presence of all groups of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in the community, whilst life expectancies were significantly improved if all NCDs within all disease groups were completely eliminated. The life expectancies in the presence of NCDs showed lowest expected years among all the present diseases groups and the life expectancies eliminating NCDs showed highest expected years among all the eliminating diseases groups. The results indicated that 10.99 years of life would be added to life expectancy at birth for the male population and 8.82 years for the female population in 2008 if NCDs were eliminated.

The findings of this study provide useful information which could contribute to a more effective allocation of targeted funding for developing public health programs. Lowering mortality by eliminating major groups of diseases results in higher life expectancy ratings. Specifically, the relative impacts of eliminating cardiovascular diseases and respiratory diseases, as compared with eliminating neoplasms.

The purpose of this research aimed to identify the risk factors for non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and determine their prevalence and characteristics in a semi-urban community in Thailand.

The survey was designed to determine the type and prevalence of risk factors for NCDs among populations in semi-urban areas in the Takianleurn subdistrict of Nakhonsawan, Thailand. A stratified random sampling design was used to select 352 subjects, aged over 15 years and living in this region. Data were collected by questionnaire and analyzed to show frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation, chi-squared, prevalence rate and prevalence rate ratio with significance indicated by p-value < 0.05 and confidence interval 95 percent.

The implications for the future study are as follows: (1) a comparative study between rural and urban or rural and semi-urban or urban and semi-urban should be studied to understand how risk factors cause NCDs and (2) Participatory action research should be introduced to assess the effectiveness of the decrease in NCDs risk factors management in the community.

(1) To scale up public health interventions measures to promote and prevent NCDs should be focused on behavioral risk factors of NCDs such as eating habits, physical activity, smoking and alcohol consumption. (2) Health promotion and disease prevention for decrease in NCDs should consist of reducing alcohol consumption and enhancing healthy eating habits and (3) To manage unmodified risk factors such as age, gender, educational level, etc. should be focused on surveillance and physical health examination yearly.

The results revealed a prevalence of NCDs of 14.8 percent. The main unmodifiable risk factors affecting NCD prevalence were gender, age, low level of education and poverty; behavioral risk factors included not eating enough fruit and vegetables, high alcohol consumption, a high-fat fast-food diet and smoking.

The prevention of NCDs requires more focus on changing the eating behavior of high-risk groups and providing easily accessible health care information and services. The entire family should be involved in the process of maintaining good health and disease prevention for all family members.

One of the priorities of the health system is community health promotion. In this regards, proper development of programs and plans is needed to create a responsive system which leads to health promotion. The aim of this study was to identify the requirements for developing non-communicable disease (NCDs) programs based on CIPP (context, input, process and product) model.

This is a qualitative study. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 40 experienced informants in the field of NCDs. The interviewees were selected bases on pre-determined criteria which then were completed by snowball sampling. Analysis was carried out using a content analysis approach that led to identifying program development requirements in four dimensions of context, input, process and product.

Twenty-nine requirements of developing program were categorized in four domains of context, input, process and product. These requirements comprised of pilot studies, the existence of appropriate needs assessment, evidence-based programs, promoting organizational culture, adequacy of resources, identification of stakeholders and comprehensive cooperation and existence of an appropriate evaluation system.

Since this study was performed through a qualitative method, it is possible, some prerequisites of program development may not be encountered. But the extreme effort has been made to perceive diversity and different aspects.

The first study was in the field of appropriate requirements for program development in the context of a centralized health system in a developing country.