The article by Brenna and Spandonaro on interregional mobility for acute hospital care in Italy raises important issues concerning social and territorial equity in a healthcare system. Based on Regions and private providers’ strategic behavior, the hypothesis adopted to explain patient cross-border mobility (CBM), demonstrated by statistical analysis, may be further explored using qualitative m...

BACKGROUND Hypertension is the leading cause of death in developed countries and reduction of salt intake is recommended as a key preventive measure. OBJECTIVE To assess the dietary sodium and potassium intakes in a national sample of Italian children and adolescents and to examine their relationships with BMI and blood pressure (BP) in the framework of the MINISAL survey, a program supported...

Medical scientific societies have the core mission of producing, pooling and disseminating solid and updated scientific information. We report the successful experience of the partnership of four national Medical Scientific Societies active in Italy in producing scientific advice on vaccines and vaccination. In particular, i) the Italian Society of Hygiene, Preventive Medicine and Public Health...

OBJECTIVE To present current scientific statements and practice on mammography, ultrasonography in pregnancy, and PSA within the Italian National Health Service (NHS). METHODS Information on the three screenings was found in several position papers prepared by working groups at national and regional levels. RESULTS For mammography the adjusted mortality rate for breast cancer increased in t...

Provisions for early identification and brief intervention (EIBI) for hazardous and harmful drinking in primary care practice were explicitly included in the Italian 2000-2003 National Health Plan. Since that time, a number of strategies were carried out under the framework of different national and international programs. The need for specific training standards on EIBI outlined by the Primary...

BACKGROUND Ageing population implies an increasing demand for health care services and resources, unsustainable according to current previsions. The European Commission is tackling this challenge throughout initiatives such as the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing (EIP-AHA), where all the efforts are aligned to the common goal of adding two active and healthy years to...

objective: this study proposed a model for provision of an effective universal coverage for mental health services based on global and national experiences, available resources and the nature of primary health care system of iran to reduce the burden of mental health conditions. method: a framework with prioritized mental and social health services was devised through a review of literature and...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE The National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) is a basic component of the assessment of patients with acute stroke. To foster and standardize the use of the NIHSS among Italian health professionals, we translated the scale, dubbed into Italian the training and test videotapes devised by the National Institutes of Health researchers, and conducted a series of cert...