As a region, Latin America has performed relatively well in terms of basic health indicators, even during the crisis years of the 1980s. However, this apparent success belies profound and complex problems of inequity and solidarity, which are rooted in wider processes of political and social exclusion. This chapter provides a short regional overview of some of these issues. Given the complexity...

Smart cards have been utilized excessively during the last couple of decades. In recent years though, a new generation of smart cards evolved: programmable smart cards. In this paper the authors give an overview of the current state of the technology and compare the cards on the market. They will also examine the trends of development, thus extrapolating their experiences about the present to t...

Giving offspring a health start: Parents’ experiences of health promotion and lifestyle change during pregnancy and early parenthood. 1. Is the question posed by the authors well defined? The research question is clear and relates to the study. This is introduced in the background section and follows through in the method, findings and discussion. 2. Are the methods appropriate and well describ...

Much of the existing research literature on the health of immigrant populations does not address the health care experiences of refugees, even though they likely experience unique and different health care needs relative to economic or family class immigrants. The objective of this paper is to explore the systemic barriers to health care access experienced by Canada’s refugee populations. The p...

Diversifying participation in crowd work can benefit the worker and requester. Increasing numbers of older adults are online, but little is known about their awareness of or how they engage in mainstream crowd work. Through an online survey with 505 seniors, we found that most have never heard of crowd work but would be motivated to complete tasks by earning money or working on interesting or s...

The number of people in the Netherlands with an illness or disability is on the rise, and the same trend is also observed in many other European and non-Western countries. This expanding group of people has experience and knowledge about what it means to live with chronic illness or disability and about the consequences for themselves, their immediate environment and for society. This knowledge...

This paper provides a conceptual, theoretical, and empirical overview of the concept of the transcendent experience. The principal goal is to formalize a scientific field around the study of dimensions, determinants, and health outcomes of transcendence. This is accomplished through posing several fundamental questions and then answering them as concisely as possible in light of current theory ...