Overweight and obesity are increasingly prevalent in Europe. In the European Region, the growing prevalence of overweight – a body mass index (BMI) over 25 kg/m2 – ranges from about 25% to 75% of the adult population. Up to a third of the adult population, about 130 million people, are obese – with...
During recent years, the use of mobile phones has increased substantially and has been paralleled by a growing concern about the effects on health attributed to exposure to the electromagnetic fields produced by them and their base stations. Demonstrating that radiation causes adverse effects on health w...
Nurse staffing makes a critical difference to patients. Research reveals a close link between inappropriate nurse staffing levels and higher rates of unwanted outcomes for patients. This report highlights evidence-informed recommendations for improvements in patient outcomes through advancements in nurse...
The Good Start Study was a prospective cohort study of 665 HIV positive women who attended routine PMTCT services. The women and infants were followed for 36 weeks after birth with data collection during home visits every 2 weeks until 12 weeks and then monthly until 9 months. At each scheduled visit inf...
The concept of screening in health care – that is, actively seeking to identify
a disease or pre-disease condition in individuals who are presumed and
presume themselves to be healthy – grew rapidly during the twentieth
century and is now widely accepted in most of the developed world. Used
wisely, i...
The delivery of health care is changing. While the acute hospital will always play
a key role in the provision of health care, reflecting its important role in training
and research, as well as its capacity to manage complex and severe disorders, in
many countries there is an increasing interest in the s...
Without evidence-informed action, health-related Millennium Development
Goals as well as those of individual nations are unlikely to be achieved.
Health policies are influenced by a variety of factors – values and beliefs,
stakeholder power, institutional constraints, and donor funding flows, among
oth...
In Europe, the number of people infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is increasing. More infections of heterosexuals are appearing, and young people and women are becoming more vulnerable. For these people, the introduction of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) now allows them to li...
The term “quality tools” is used in many different ways to refer to a method used by an individual, a team, an organization or a health system. It is most often used in a narrow sense in American texts to refer to a set of simple “continuous quality improvement” methods (CQI tools). More broadly,...
“Grey zone” treatments are those that rely upon the patient’s judgement of associated benefits versus harms. When clinicians judge patients are eligible for “grey zone” treatments, their acceptance should be consistent with informed patients’ values. The question is how can one obtain informe...
