BACKGROUND The effectiveness of eHealth interventions in terms of reach and outcomes is now well documented. However, there is a need to understand not only whether eHealth interventions work, but also what kind of functions and mechanisms enhance their effectiveness. The present investigation contributes to tackling these challenges by investigating the role played by functional interactivity ...

Self-reported health is considered a health outcome related to neighborhood characteristics. This study analyzes the influence of urban multi-criteria deprivation and spatial accessibility to healthcare on individual self-reported health from a case study carried out in the city of Quito, Ecuador. A multi-criteria deprivation index and two alternative scenarios of this index were generated. A g...

This article reviews the important concepts that led to the development of the International Classification of Impairments, Disabilities, and Handicaps (ICIDH), explicates the International Classification of Functioning and Disability (ICIDH-2), and discusses implications of the ICIDH-2 as a conceptual framework for outcome measures. The original ICIDH opened the door to include factors outside...

BACKGROUND: Equality of health status is the health equity goal being pursued in developed countries and advocated by development agencies such as WHO and The Rockefeller Foundation for developing countries also. Other concepts of fair distribution of health such as equity of access to medical care may not be sufficient to equalise health outcomes but, nevertheless, they may be more practical a...

Patients' expectations in the context of medical treatment represent a growing area of research, with accumulating evidence suggesting their influence on health outcomes across a variety of medical conditions. However, the aggregation of evidence is complicated due to an inconsistent and disintegrated application of expectation constructs and the heterogeneity of assessment strategies. Therefor...

Once again, I would like to salute the initiative to hold this Forum in our country, giving us the opportunity to deepen our quest for better health for the world’s peoples, and to reaffi rm that working together, a better world is possible. For our part, we have opened our arms, minds and hearts to join you in pursuit of these objectives, enhanced by the diverse points of view and thoughtful o...

BACKGROUND To explain the possible effects of exposure to weather conditions on population health outcomes, weather data need to be calculated at a level in space and time that is appropriate for the health data. There are various ways of estimating exposure values from raw data collected at weather stations but the rationale for using one technique rather than another; the significance of the ...

This paper presents a framework to explore the relationship between health equity and community empowerment. It traces the progression of the concept of participation to the present term of empowerment and the links among empowerment, equity, and health outcomes. It argues that the relationship can best be described by using the acronym CHOICE (Capacity-building, Human rights, Organizational su...

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study is to determine whether patient activation is a changing or changeable characteristic and to assess whether changes in activation also are accompanied by changes in health behavior. STUDY METHODS To obtain variability in activation and self-management behavior, a controlled trial with chronic disease patients randomized into either intervention or control c...

BACKGROUND Although health outcomes may have fundamentally nonlinear relationships with relevant behavioral, psychological, cognitively, or biological predictors, most analytical models assume a linear relationship. Furthermore, some health outcomes may have multimodal distributions, but most statistical models in common use assume a unimodal, normal distribution. Suitable nonlinear models shou...