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The purpose of this paper is to report on gender differences in emergency physicians with respect to their attitudes, knowledge, and practices concerning health promotion and disease prevention.

A mail survey of 325 male and 97 female Canadian emergency physicians.

Results suggest female emergency physicians report having greater knowledge of health promotion topics, spend more time with each of their patients in the emergency setting, and engage in more health promotion counseling in the emergency setting than do their male counterparts.

The paper argues that in the future, educating and socializing emergency physicians, both male and female, in the practice of health promotion will enhance the potential of the emergency department to be a more effective resource for their community.

General health, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, cancer, AIDS, and immunization are the greatest health issues affecting the African‐American community. Increasingly, there is a need to gather and disseminate information through a variety of outlets. This selection of health‐related resources provides access to information that is currently available on the Internet. The audience includes the layperson, educator, or health‐care professional who desires to gain more knowledge about health issues or seeks to share information with others on health issues. The materials chosen for inclusion were selected from the Web, using a variety of search engines and tools. The Web sites included were chosen based on their relevancy to health issues affecting African‐Americans and range of information available to meet the needs of various populations.

This study aimed to analyze and define the concept of readiness for hospital discharge (RHD) in patients with myocardial infarction (MI).

Walker and Avant's approach was used for concept analysis. Electronic text searches were performed using valid databases with “readiness for hospital discharge” and “MI” keywords. The research included quantitative and qualitative studies related to RHD published between 1997 and 2021 in English and Persian. Out of 103 obtained articles, 29 met the inclusion criteria.

In the analysis, the authors identified stable physical state, desirable individual and social conditions, psychological stability, adequate support, adequate information and knowledge, and multidisciplinary care as the attributes of the determinants of RHD. Antecedents were divided into two categories, including preadmission conditions (economic and social, etc.) and postadmission conditions (disease severity and patient health needs, etc). The consequences were also identified as both positive (e.g. self-care) and side effects (e.g. reduced readmission).

The results showed that the concept of RHD in MI patients is a complex and multidimensional condition that applies to all patients on discharge. It is critical for the care team to pay attention to its attributes and scopes in the process of preparing the patient for discharge. It is also suggested that the concept be used as a nursing diagnosis on the North American Nursing Diagnosis Association (NANDA) list. The Association provides nurses with an up-to-date list of nursing diagnoses.

This paper aims to show through empirical examples how five foresight methods have provided value in medicine and global health, and to argue for greater use of health foresight.

Through evaluation, literature search, and personal experiences, five approaches were identified where health foresight has shown strong value: forecasting, scenario planning, Delphi, technology roadmapping, and mass collaboration. For each approach, compelling examples are given, and usage and potential discussed.

There is great opportunity to learn from and expand on past successes, and to customize foresight methods to help decision making in medicine and global health. The range of novel applications to date provides clear evidence that applying foresight methods to health can help prepare for the future, including development of policy and health interventions.

Metrics for the impact of health foresight are not widely used, and could be a focus of future research.

By seeing compelling examples of diverse foresight methods in medicine and global health, readers will be better equipped to improve health systems and interventions, and prepare for future public health incidents.

The paper brings together discussion of a range of health foresight success stories, and suggests potential customizations of foresight for the health field. Readers who are health professionals or involved in making policy for health systems will gain a toolbox for creative planning. Readers who are foresight professionals will gain a better understanding of which foresight methods have shown value in medicine and global health, and potential refinement of foresight techniques for health applications.

Poor health-related quality of life (HRQoL) is one of the important issues in the health sector. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the prevalence and socio-economic inequality in poor HRQoL in Tehran city, Iran.

In total, 562 adults were included in this cross-sectional study. The cluster sampling method was used for data collection from May to June, 2016 in Tehran city, Iran. Data on HRQoL, using EuroQol 5-dimensions questionnaire, and data on socio-economic and demographic variables were gathered. Convenience regression method was performed to measure the concentration index (CI). Decomposition analysis was performed to determine the contribution of variables on socio-economic inequality in poor HRQoL. All analyses were performed by Stata v.14.

The prevalence of poor HRQoL was 28.3 percent. The value of CI for “poor HRQoL” was −0.299 (95% confidence interval: −0.402 to −0.195). Socio-economic status (SES) was the largest contributor to socio-economic inequality in poor HRQoL (69.44 percent of inequality was explained by SES). Age, obesity and race had a positive contribution to socio-economic inequality in poor HRQoL among the participants. Nonetheless, sex and smoking intensity had a negative contribution to inequality in poor HRQoL.

There is little evidence about the prevalence of poor HRQoL in insured people. This study provided new evidence in this area through the investigation of socio-economic inequality in poor HRQoL and its determinants among people with health insurance in Iran using decomposition analysis.

Internal prediction markets draw on the wisdom of crowds, gathering knowledge from a broad range of information sources and embedding that knowledge in the stock price. This chapter examines the use of internal prediction markets as a forecasting tool, including as a stand-alone, and as a supplement to forecasting tools. In addition, this chapter examines internal prediction market applications used in real-world settings and issues associated with the accuracy of internal prediction markets.

The purpose of this study is to explore the association of serum retinol and number of circulating inflammatory cells and disease activity in patients with ulcerative colitis.

A total of 60 patients with ulcerative colitis were enrolled in a cross-sectional pilot study. Patients were recruited from specialized clinic of Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Iran between April and August 2015. Mayo clinic index was used to assess clinical disease activity score. Blood samples were collected. Serum retinol was assessed using HPLC to determine vitamin A status. Complete blood count and lymphocyte phenotyping were performed by automated hematology analyzer and flow-cytometric analysis, respectively.

According to Mayo scoring, 68.33 per cent of patients had mild and 31.66 per cent had moderate or severe disease activity. About 43.33 per cent of patients were vitamin A deficient, with 23.33 per cent having moderate to severe deficiency (serum retinol < 20 µg/dl). Lower levels of serum retinol and higher count and percentages of CD3+, CD8+ T cells and neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio were statistically associated with disease activity according to univariate analysis (p = 0.002, 0.037, <0.001, 0.031, 0.002 and 0.039); however, in binary logistic regression, only lower levels of serum retinol were independently associated with disease activity with a OR of 0.564 (p = 0.021; 95 per cent CI 0.35-0.92).

Vitamin A deficiency was detected in this study population. Patients with moderate to severe disease activity demonstrated lower serum retinol, higher CD8+ T cells and neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio compared to patients with mild disease activity.

Predicting future outbreaks and understanding how they are spreading from location to location can improve patient care provided. Recently, mining social media big data provided the ability to track patterns and trends across the world. This study aims to analyze social media micro-blogs and geographical locations to understand how disease outbreaks spread over geographies and to enhance forecasting of future disease outbreaks.

In this paper, the authors use Twitter data as the social media data source, influenza-like illnesses (ILI) as disease epidemic and states in the USA as geographical locations. They present a novel network-based model to make predictions about the spread of diseases a week in advance utilizing social media big data.

The authors showed that flu-related tweets align well with ILI data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) (p < 0.049). The authors compared this model to earlier approaches that utilized airline traffic, and showed that ILI activity estimates of their model were more accurate. They also found that their disease diffusion model yielded accurate predictions for upcoming ILI activity (p < 0.04), and they predicted the diffusion of flu across states based on geographical surroundings at 76 per cent accuracy. The equations and procedures can be translated to apply to any social media data, other contagious diseases and geographies to mine large data sets.

First, while extensive work has been presented utilizing time-series analysis on single geographies, or post-analysis of highly contagious diseases, no previous work has provided a generalized solution to identify how contagious diseases diffuse across geographies, such as states in the USA. Secondly, due to nature of the social media data, various statistical models have been extensively used to address these problems.

The purpose of this paper is to identify health and physical activity status and prevalence of chronic diseases risk factors in a sample of Government office employees.

Quantitative assessment of various health and physical activity measures including blood pressure, BMI, waist‐to‐hip ratio, cholesterol, blood glucose and physical activity in adult male (n=66; age=42 ±9 years) and female (n=262; age=40 ±10 years) Government office employees located in metropolitan, rural and remote areas of central and northern Queensland.

It was found that 54 per cent of females and 77 per cent of males were classified as overweight or obese, while 38 per cent of all participants did not participate in sufficient weekly physical activity. Metropolitan females reported significantly higher blood glucose levels and diastolic blood pressure but significantly lower waist‐to‐hip ratio than rural and remote females.

There was uneven sampling across geographical locations, however the sample size of each group was largely indicative of the workforce in each location.

There is a large prevalence of chronic disease risk factors in male and female Government office employees working throughout metropolitan, rural and remote areas of central and northern Queensland. Workplace personnel should work to improve the health and physical activity status of employees, as this may have positive effects on workplace participation and productivity.

This study provides insight into the prevalence of chronic disease risk factors in Government office workers undertaking similar work duties across a variety of geographical locations, and provides suggestions for workplace interventions.

In our society, there are some trends that are not exciting. We are living increasingly in an aging society and we are becoming fatter (globesity). Moreover, we are facing an alarming decline in physical activity (PA) worldwide. In this context, chronic diseases are booming and health expenditures are skyrocketing. Stimulating PA is likely the best way to reduce the burden of disease and increase the social, psychological, and economic well-being of a community. In this chapter, two projects aimed at increasing PA among individuals are presented. The key point of the two projects is that they medicalize PA. The first project was carried out in Italy. A series of doctors started to “prescribe” PA as if it were a medicine. Therefore, PA is presented as a real cure to treat diseases and pathologies. The other project was supported by a private enterprise. The “concept” of the project is summarized as follows: “The quantity and quality of the physical activity carried out by the patient should be considered by the general practitioner as a clinical parameter as well as other parameters, such as blood pressure, weight, and glucose level.” It is possible that the success of these two initiatives stems from the fact that the biomedical complex has a strong influence on the part of the population. It is very effective to use a reliable source to spread a health promotion message. It becomes a medicalization without pathologization and a form of medicalization without pharmacologicalization. In Conrad’s (2007) words, it becomes a conceptual medicalization.