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...
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...
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...
In most countries the pressure for health care reform is aimed at improving the efficiency, equity and effectiveness of the health sector. Emerging evidence shows that health care reforms can affect men and women differently, as a consequence of their different positions as users and producers of health ...
This is a Health Evidence Network (HEN) evidence report on antenatal care (ANC). This report is a
supplement to the 2003 HEN report on the same subject (http://www.euro.who.int/Document/e82996.pdf).
It is a review of the best available evidence in the scientific literature regarding ANC interventions. It...
Health systems have developed at different speeds, and with differing degrees
of complexity throughout the twentieth century, reflecting the diverse political
and social conditions in each country.
Notwithstanding their diversity, all systems, however, share a common reason
for their existence, namely th...
