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Potentially, technology transfer offices (TTOs) can play a significant role in facilitating the successful transfer of technologies and knowledge between universities and industry. Many developing countries are currently developing technology transfer practices within their universities. However, many developing country TTOs operate inefficiently or are ineffective. The sharing of experiences can lead to improvements in this endeavour. Advanced nations can serve as a frame of reference and a basis of policy recommendations for developing countries due to the longevity of their technology transfer activities. The authors issued 234 questionnaires to European university TTOs, of which 54 usable questionnaires were returned. They combine the data from these questionnaires with 19 interviews conducted with university TTO staff from 9 countries in an attempt to create a typology of practices that developing nations could emulate to improve technology transfer in their own contexts. While ultimately a clear typology was not forthcoming, the authors found some relationship between the dominant focus in the mission statement of developed country TTOs, the activities they undertake, their position in the university governance structure and their level of maturity which may usefully inform the development of TTO practices in developing countries.

Immigrant minority (IM) languages have a significant presence in certain European regions. Nonetheless, these languages are not usually included in the school curriculum. This paper aims to analyse the studies published between 2010 and 2020 considering IM languages in multilingual European education contexts. The method included a search of academic papers published in the databases ERIC, Web of Science and Scopus, which yielded 42 studies. The studies were analysed by considering: (1) the demographic characteristics of the countries where the studies were conducted, (2) the sociolinguistic or psycholinguistic focus of the papers in relation to the European country, and (3) the characteristics of the bi-multilingual education programme including IM languages. The results indicate that: (1) the demographic characteristics of the country are not strictly related to the number of studies published, (2) most studies have a sociolinguistic approach even though many studies analyse both sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic factors, and (3) only seven multilingual education programmes including IM languages were described in these papers. We conclude that there is a lack of research focusing on IM languages in educational settings and discuss how addressing these gaps could create opportunities for building equitable multilingual communities in Europe.

This article discusses the challenges and opportunities identified in the implementation of the Citylab project in Latin America during the period of 2015-2018. The project was funded by the Erasmus+ Key action 2 programme of the European Union. The project aims to innovate teaching for sustainability in higher education institutions through Problem Based Learning (PBL). Opposed to traditional teaching methods, the pedagogical approach of PBL is a learner-centred approach that takes a complex problem as point of departure instead of existing established knowledge. Since application of such learning methods is limited in Latin America, the Citylab project attempts to introduce PBL in the existing curricula of 12 Latin American universities through the implementation and development of interdisciplinary Citylab modules focusing on sustainable urban development. Citylab project will be presented. Third, we highlight some critical issues and success factors experienced during the project. The findings of this paper are based on (1) self-reported questionnaires from the partners at the end of 2017; (2) onsite visits by the authors and expert visits; (3) focus groups, interviews and conversations with project leaders of the participating institutions during the project. Depending on the institution, the project results were varying in terms of innovation and upscaling potential. Critical factors were related to the role of the project leader in the organization, the flexibility of the implementation and cultural differences. Internal regulations created both incentives and disincentives for participation. Competitive elements in the project and available resources for equipment can act as stimulators in some cases. The challenge lies moreover in detecting windows of opportunities for change in order to accomplish curriculum reform and by doing so, pursue continuation of the PBL approach after the project's horizon.

With schools and universities closing across Europe, the COVID-19 lockdown left actors in the field of education battling with the unprecedented challenge of finding a meaningful way to keep the wheels of education turning online. The sudden need for digital solutions across the field of education resulted in the emergence of a variety of digital networks and collaborative online platforms. In this joint article from scholars around Europe, we explore the COVID-19 lockdowns of physical education across the European region, and the different processes of emergency digitalization that followed in their wake. Spanning perspectives from Italy, Germany, Belgium, and the Nordic countries, the article's five cases provide a glimpse of how these processes have at the same time accelerated and consolidated the involvement of various commercial and non-commercial actors in public education infrastructures. By gathering documentation, registering dynamics, and making intimations of the crisis as it unfolded, the aim of the joint paper is to provide an opportunity for considering the implications of these accelerations and consolidations for the heterogeneous futures of European education.

The increasing number of migrants and refugees arriving in Europe places new demands on European education systems. In this context, the role that free digital learning (FDL) could play in fostering inclusion has attracted renewed interest. While the existing literature highlights some general design principles for developing FDL for migrants and refugees, there is little information on the use of FDL at specific education levels, or for specific learning purposes. This paper presents the results of a qualitative study that was carried out as part of the Moocs4Inclusion project of the Joint Research Centre (JRC) between July and December 2016. The study, which has a European focus, disaggregates the analysis of FDL initiatives by what were identified as its three most common purposes: (a) language learning, (b) civic integration and employment, and (c) higher education. For each of these topics, the study sheds light on the approaches used by a wide sample of initiatives, users' levels of awareness of what is available and take up, and migrants' and refugees' perceptions of the current offer. In order to collect the information needed to cover different approaches and perspectives, semi-structured interviews with 24 representatives of 10 FDL initiatives and four focus groups with 39 migrants and refugees were carried out. The results show that there are indeed overlaps between the purposes of FDL initiatives and their design principles. Specific recommendations on how to better design FDL initiatives for migrants and refugees, taking into account their specific purposes, have also been identified.

This paper reports on an investigation examining provision of physical education continuing professional development (CPD) in European countries undertaken to identify the types of practices being employed. We begin by providing a brief overview of what we currently know about CPD internationally in general education and physical education. Data are reported to reflect Parker and Patton's (2017) key characteristics of CPD that highlight effective CPD, summarise current trends and issues in physical education, and are intended to serve as a guide to how teachers learn and how they might be better served in that learning in these European countries. Studying current practices in CPD provision identified in this study provided modest insight to inform teacher education programmes and CPD providers on the current status of physical education CPD currently being employed in Europe. We propose these findings might inform international and comparative education with respect to CPD and set the foundation for physical education colleagues in Europe to develop a CPD network where endeavours such as sharing of CPD practices, engaging in discussion of those practices, and the design of collaborative research on such CPD practices are based.

Social media have become indispensable tools for (legacy) news companies and brands to increase online traffic for their own platforms. A recent trend is the production and dissemination of native news content specifically for and through platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. This paper uses a mixed methods research design to study the news production and content of @nws.nws.nws, a hugely popular Instagram channel targeting 13–17-year olds in Flanders (Belgium) which is maintained by the newsroom of VRT, the Flemish PSM. The explorative study highlights the differences in journalistic practice when producing news content for online platforms only and the changes it entails for traditional news values, dependency on social media platforms and media regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This data paper describes a recent and spatially complete inventory of the terrestrial isopods of Belgium between 2011 and 2020. During these 10 years every 10 × 10 km² cell of the Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) grid in Belgium (373 grid cells) was visited in search for terrestrial isopods. Inventories covered different habitat types in every grid cell such as forest, wetlands or stream sides, and urban areas. Most of the dataset records were obtained by hand-collection methods such as turning stones and dead wood, or by sieving litter and through casual observations. These inventories were carried out by specialists from Spinicornis, the Belgian Terrestrial Isopod Group. Their data is complemented with pitfall trap data from scientific projects and verified citizen science data collected via waarnemingen.be and observations.be from the same time period. This resulted in 19,406 dataset records of 35 terrestrial isopod species. All dataset records are georeferenced using the centroid of their respective 5 × 5 km² UTM grid cell. The dataset is published as open data and available through the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). Direct link to the dataset: https://doi.org/10.15468/mw9c66. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Eleven papers on developments in middle school education (grades seven through nine) in England, West Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Belgium are presented. Topics include comprehensive education for 11 to 16 year olds, mathematics, political issues, accessibility, curricula, school evaluation, and the view of the United States. (TJH)

Despite their increasing political importance and role in frame construction and application, issue framing research has paid very little attention to domain experts – those who hold comprehensive knowledge in a specific field. This paper draws upon concepts from environmental psychology to examine how agroecology training centers in Belgium, France, and Spain construct and apply agroecology issue frames based on specific environmental values. I develop the argument that by highlighting a "community frame" based on the value of environmental altruism, domain experts can act as potentially powerful conduits through which informal institutions can develop and spread in the transition to agroecology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The paper aims at providing evidence on the impact on employment of outward foreign direct investment, particularly from developed countries into low-wage countries, which is a major concern in many developed countries. Design/methodology/approach – The effects of foreign production undertaken by Belgian foreign-oriented companies on employment in Belgium are investigated by performing econometric tests for complementarity or substitution between home and affiliate employment. The data are from the Amadeus database and consist of a sample of 254 Belgian parent companies with foreign affiliates in low-wage and other high-wage European countries during the 1999-2007 period. Findings – The results show that, given the size of parent production in the home country, Belgian multinational enterprises with foreign affiliates in higher-wage European countries tend to employ more labour at home the more they produce in the host country. This probably reflects the needs of foreign affiliates in higher-wage European countries for management and supervisory services from parent companies. Another explanation might be that Belgian outward FDI is largely vertical. In contrast, no evidence is found about employment reallocation between parents and affiliates operating in lower-wage European countries. Originality/value – The paper provides evidence on overall effects on employment in Belgium of its outward foreign direct investment for the period 1999-2007, i.e. using the most recent data available. In contrast to many other studies, statistical diagnostic tests were carried out to choose the appropriate model to best fit the data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Body image issues can affect all domains of sexual functioning. The aim of this study was to examine how, in a sociocultural context where physical and sexual attractiveness is equated with young and slim body ideals, appearance dissatisfaction and importance are related to sexual satisfaction in older adults in four European countries. A cross-sectional survey with probability samples of the population aged 60–75 years was used. Only respondents with a partner were included in this paper, and the countries included Norway (n = 957), Denmark (n = 846), Belgium (n = 612), and Portugal (n = 367). Sexual satisfaction, appearance dissatisfaction, and importance were assessed, and frequency of intercourse/kissing and cuddling, relationship satisfaction, age, and body mass index were all used as control variables. Belgian men scored significantly lower on sexual satisfaction, while there was no difference in sexual satisfaction in women. Appearance dissatisfaction was lower in Scandinavian women and men, and in Belgian men, and appearance salience was lower in Norwegian men and women, and in Portuguese women. Linear regression analysis revealed that, adjusting for confounders, appearance dissatisfaction was significantly related to sexual satisfaction in Scandinavian women and men, as well as in Belgian men. Compared to research on younger adults, appearance evaluation appeared to play an equally important role in sexual satisfaction in older adults in our study. The variation in appearance dissatisfaction in older adults across European countries is a novel finding that needs to be examined further. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cities are major drivers of environmental change at all scales and are especially at risk from the ensuing effects, which include poor air quality, flooding and heat waves. Typically, these issues are studied on a city-by-city basis owing to the spatial complexity of built landscapes, local topography and emission patterns. However, to ensure knowledge sharing and to integrate local-scale processes with regional and global scale modelling initiatives, there is a pressing need for a world-wide database on cities that is suited for environmental studies. In this paper we present a European database that has a particular focus on characterising urbanised landscapes. It has been derived using tools and techniques developed as part of the World Urban Database and Access Portal Tools (WUDAPT) project, which has the goal of acquiring and disseminating climate-relevant information on cities worldwide. The European map is the first major step toward creating a global database on cities that can be integrated with existing topographic and natural land-cover databases to support modelling initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the late 1990s and early 2000s, in what can be called an 'integrationist wave', standardised integration requirements for naturalisation have become increasingly common in Europe. To examine the impact of such measures, I combine original ethnographic data on institutions involved in the implementation of citizenship policies in Belgium and the UK with a qualitative meta-analysis of existing ethnographic studies of the implementation of citizenship policies. I show how, in addition to introducing new obstacles to naturalisation, standardised requirements have also reduced the discretion inscribed in earlier procedures, albeit not uniformly across different cases. The integrationist wave could thus be understood not simply as the introduction of restrictive notions of integration, but also as the systemisation of earlier evaluation practices. I further show signs of a more recent tendency for states to retreat from examining the integration of candidates to citizenship, outsourcing the evaluation directly or indirectly to private actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background:The European Disability Strategy (2010–2020) seeks to significantly raise the proportion of people with disabilities working in the open labour market. The ERGO WORK project is a collaboration of academic and industrial partners in six European countries, focused on understanding and tackling barriers to workplace inclusion for workers with disabilities. Methods:This study sought to explore the perceptions and needs of stakeholders in terms of workplace adaptation to the needs of employees with disabilities. An exploratory online survey was completed by 480 participants across six countries. Results:The analysis suggests that workplaces could be further improved to meet the needs of employees with considerable scope for training within companies to raise awareness about employees’ needs, employers’ obligations and workplace adaptation. Conclusions:This snapshot suggests there is still a gap between intent and reality in workplace inclusion and further strategies are needed to improve the opportunities for employees with disabilities. The paper argues that ergonomics may have a key role to play in tackling these challenges and adapting the workplace environment and job design to suit the needs of individual employees.Implications for rehabilitationThis study suggests there is considerable scope for workplace adaptation and improvements to meet the needs of employees with disabilities.Employers need and want further specialist practitioner guidance to facilitate workplace inclusion and support adaptation to individual needs.Organisations would benefit from training to raise awareness about potential solutions and approaches that would support more widespread employment of people with disabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Spirituality/religion serves important roles in coping, survival and maintaining overall wellbeing within African cultures and communities, especially when diagnosed with a chronic disease like HIV/AIDS that can have a profound effect on physical and mental health. However, spirituality/religion can be problematic to some patients and cause caregiving difficulties. The objective of this paper was to examine the role of spirituality/religion as a source of strength, resilience and wellbeing among sub-Saharan African (SSA) migrant women with HIV/AIDS. A qualitative study of SSA migrant women was conducted between April 2013 and December 2014. Participants were recruited through purposive sampling and snowball techniques from AIDS Reference Centres and AIDS workshops in Belgium, if they were 18 years and older, French or English speaking, and diagnosed HIV positive more than 3 months beforehand. We conducted semi-structured interviews with patients and did observations during consultations and support groups attendances. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the data. 44 women were interviewed, of whom 42 were Christians and 2 Muslims. None reported religious/spiritual alienation, though at some point in time many had felt the need to question their relationship with God by asking “why me?” A majority reported being more spiritual/religious since being diagnosed HIV positive. Participants believed that prayer, meditation, regular church services and religious activities were the main spiritual/religious resources for achieving connectedness with God. They strongly believed in the power of God in their HIV/AIDS treatment and wellbeing. Spiritual/religious resources including prayer, meditation, church services, religious activities and believing in the power of God helped them cope with HIV/AIDS. These findings highlight the importance of spirituality in physical and mental health and wellbeing among SSA women with HIV/AIDS that should be taken into consideration in providing a caring and healthy environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spy Cave is one of the most iconic Pleistocene sites yielding two adult Neanderthal skeletons recovered in the 19th century. The cave is located in Belgium and is one of the most important sites for human evolution in European context. The remains of Spy definitively influenced the concept of Neanderthals as archaic fossil humans in relation to modern human populations. This paper shows the results of the taphonomic study of these human remains to investigate the cause of death of the two individuals, and why they occurred at this site, specifically whether they were buried. Excavation in the 19th century lacked some of the present-day methodology of excavation, and there is little information about context, but we have examined the taphonomic modifications of the bones of the two skeletons in comparison with the putative faunal remains found in the cave. Several hypotheses have been proposed for the Spy human remains, from human cannibalism to intentional funerary burials. We will try to clarify the possible cause of death and propose the most congruent hypothesis in the taphonomic context of these human remains, from accidental death due to falling limestone blocks to interpersonal violence. • Spy Cave is one of the most iconic Neanderthal sites with two adult skeletons. • Discovered in 1866, various hypotheses were proposed: burial, cannibalism, accident. • We clarify the possible cause of death based on taphonomic and forensic criteria. • The most feasible: interpersonal violence followed by accidental falling blocks. • This case may appear as the first perfect crime naturally hidden. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the integration of Turkish labour migrant children in four countries across Europe in terms of their educational performance. By looking at the PISA 2003 (Programme for International Student Assessment) data pertaining to mathematics achievement of 15-year-olds, it explores the effects of ethnicity, gender and family background, on the one hand, and institutional factors (such as kindergarten attendance, grading and tracking), on the other, to offer a better understanding of the large immigrant-native gaps in educational performance. As a result, the author argues that institutional factors can have an impact on school-related integration, in addition to the effects associated with individual factors, thus adding another layer of disadvantage on the children of immigrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globalisation Continues to be a hot topic in the treasury industry sector, where most transactions are set up and implemented on a global basis. However, tax rules still generally only apply to specific jurisdictions, triggering a process of tax arbitrage among jurisdictions keen to establish themselves as key locations for treasury centres. Particular European countries, such as Switzerland, Luxembourg and Ireland, have strong traditions as treasury locations. Belgium and The Netherlands also join this shortlist, as both have recently amended their domestic tax rules to boost their attractiveness to treasurers. This paper addresses key features of these new tax rules which will prove most appealing for treasury centres. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper reports findings from visits to palliative care settings and research units in the UK, Belgium and the Netherlands. The aim was to learn about clinicians’ (both nurses and doctors) and academic researchers’ understandings and experiences of palliative sedation for managing suffering at the end of life, and their views regarding its clinical, ethical and social implications. The project was linked to two larger studies of technologies used in palliative care. Eleven doctors, 14 nurses and 10 researchers took part in informal interviews. Relevant reports and papers from the academic, clinical and popular press were also collected from the three countries. The study took place in a context in which attention has been drawn towards palliative sedation by the legalisation of euthanasia in the Netherlands and Belgium, and by the re-examination of the legal position on assisted dying in the UK. In this context, palliative sedation has been posited by some as an alternative path of action. We report respondents’ views under four headings: understanding and responding to suffering; the relationship between palliative sedation and euthanasia; palliative sedation and artificial hydration; and risks and uncertainties in the clinician-patient/family relationship. We conclude that the three countries can learn from one another about the difficult issues involved in giving compassionate care to those who are suffering immediately before death. Future research should be directed at enabling dialogue between countries: this has already been shown to open the door to the development of improved palliative care and to enhance respect for the different values and histories in each. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper proposes a framework to account for innovation similar to the usual accounting framework in production analysis and a measure of innovativity comparable to that of total factor productivity. This innovation accounting framework is illustrated using micro-aggregated firm data from the first Community Innovation Surveys (CIS1) for seven European countries: Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, and Italy for the year 1992. On the basis of estimation of a generalized Tobit model and measuring innovation as the share of total sales due to improved or new products, it compares the propensity to innovate, and the innovation intensity conditional and unconditional on being innovative, across the seven countries and low- and high-tech manufacturing sectors. Even with relatively few explanatory variables, our innovation framework already accounts for sizeable differences in country innovation intensity. It also shows that differences in innovativity across countries can be nonetheless very large. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Heat exposure, particularly when co-occurring with extreme humidity levels, is amongst the most pronounced and challenging extreme weather conditions in European dairy production. Since these conditions are expected to increase in magnitude and frequency due to climate change, it is crucial to better understand the actual impact under managed production within the European dairy farm population. In this paper, we estimate the impact of heat stress, i.e. hot and humid weather conditions on milk quantity and quality in Flanders, a high intensity dairy production region in Belgium. The novelty of our approach is twofold. First, we provide insights in the non-linear response of dairy production (quantity and quality) to extreme heat using farm-level production data. Second, using data from the entire population of farmers in Flanders, and covering 6 years (N = 178.843), our results provide a maximum of representativeness and allows to infer on economic relevance of the effects. We use monthly milk deliveries within the grazing season for the period 2009 to 2014, which we match with temperature and humidity conditions at the barn-level. Using fixed effects regression, we particularly focus on heat shocks, i.e. the deviations from the average climate at the barn location, on production shocks, i.e. deviations from the average production of the barn. We use non-linear restricted cubic splines regression to estimate the response of milk quality and quantity to hourly temperature-humidity (THI) exposure. We find reductions of milk quantity and protein contents under hot and humid conditions, while milk fat content appears unaffected. These results are in contrast to earlier findings of heat exposure on dairy production in two ways. First, we find the critical temperature-humidity threshold above which production is affected to be substantially higher than in earlier/experimental studies. Second, not all quality components are affected by these conditions. We conclude that under managed conditions, farmers seem to be partly able to adapt their production to moderate heat exposure. Our results deliver important implications for policy makers and agricultural practitioners. While we find that farmers seem to be able to cope with moderate heat conditions, milk quality and quantity drop under extreme heat conditions. These impacts are economically relevant. [Display omitted] • Extreme weather conditions increasingly challenge agricultural production. • We investigate effects of extreme heat in Belgian dairy production using farm-level data covering 6 years (N = 178.843). • We find that extreme temperature and humidity affect milk quality and quantity. • The identified effects of heat stress in dairy production are of large economic relevance. • Farmers and policy makers need to develop strategies to cope with more exposure to extreme weather. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The international terrorism threat urges societies to invest in the planning and organization of psychosocial care. With the aim to contribute to cross-national learning, this study describes the content, target populations and providers of psychosocial care to civilians after terrorist attacks in Norway, France and Belgium. Methods: We identified and reviewed pre- and post-attack policy documents, guidelines, reports and other relevant grey literature addressing the psychosocial care response to terrorist attacks in Oslo/Utøya, Norway on 22 July 2011; in Paris, France on 13 November 2015; and in Brussels, Belgium on 22 March 2016. Results: In Norway, there was a primary care based approach with multidisciplinary crisis teams in the local municipalities. In response to the terrorist attacks, there were proactive follow-up programs within primary care and occupational health services with screenings of target groups throughout a year. In France, there was a national network of specialized emergency psychosocial units primarily consisting of psychiatrists, psychologists and psychiatric nurses organized by the regional health agencies. They provided psychological support the first month including guidance for long-term healthcare, but there were no systematic screening programs after the acute phase. In Belgium, there were psychosocial intervention networks in the local municipalities, yet the acute psychosocial care was coordinated at a federal level. A reception centre was organized to provide acute psychosocial care, but there were no reported public long-term psychosocial care initiatives in response to the attacks. Conclusions: Psychosocial care responses, especially long-term follow-up activities, differed substantially between countries. Models for registration of affected individuals, monitoring of their health and continuous evaluation of countries' psychosocial care provision incorporated in international guidelines may strengthen public health responses to mass-casualty incidents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Establishing and implementing rules that would teach pupils to become citizens became a crucial technique for turning those spots on the map of Europe whose sovereignty had shifted after the First World War into lived social spaces. This article uses Arnold Van Gennep's notion that a shift in social status possesses a spatiality and temporality of its own, in order to analyse how principals of secondary schools negotiated transformation in the Belgian–German borderlands. It asks whether and how they were called on to offer training that would make the borderlands more cohesive with the rest of Belgium in terms of the social origins of pupils and the content of study, and examines the extent to which they were historical actors with room for their own decision-making on creating and abolishing a liminal phase, thereby leading secondary education through its rites of passage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Background: To be able to provide high-quality palliative care, there need to be a number of organizational structures available in the nursing homes. It is unclear to what extent such structures are actually present in nursing homes in Europe. We aim to examine structural indicators for quality of palliative care in nursing homes in Europe and to evaluate the differences in terms of availability of and access to palliative care, infrastructure for residents and families, multidisciplinary meetings and quality improvement initiatives. Methods: A PACE cross-sectional study (2015) of nursing homes in Belgium, England, Finland, Italy, the Netherlands and Poland. Nursing homes (N = 322) were selected in each country via proportional stratified random sampling. Nursing home administrators (N = 305) filled in structured questionnaires on nursing home characteristics. Organization of palliative care was measured using 13 of the previously defined IMPACT structural indicators for quality of palliative care covering four domains: availability of and access to palliative care, infrastructure for residents and families, multidisciplinary meetings and quality improvement initiatives. We calculated structural indicator scores for each country and computed differences in indicator scores between the six countries. Pearson's Chi-square test was used to compute the p-value of each difference. Results: The availability of specialist palliative care teams in nursing homes was limited (6.1–48.7%). In Finland, Poland and Italy, specialist advice was also less often available (35.6–46.9%). Up to 49% of the nursing homes did not provide a dedicated contact person who maintained regular contact with the resident and relatives. The 24/7 availability of opioids for all nursing home residents was low in Poland (37.5%). Conclusions: This study found a large heterogeneity between countries in the organization of palliative care in nursing homes, although a common challenge is ensuring sufficient structural access to specialist palliative care services. Policymakers and health and palliative care organizations can use these structural indicators to identify areas for improvement in the organization of palliative care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The objective of this work was to analyse the prevalence trends of multimorbidity among European community-dwelling adults.Methods: A temporal series study based on waves 1, 2, 4, 5, 6 and 7 of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) was conducted, and community-dwelling participants aged 50+ (n = 274,614) from 15 European countries were selected for the period 2004-2017. Prevalence, adjusted by age, Average Annual Percentage Change (APC) and 95% confidence interval (95% CI) were all calculated. Trend analyses were realised by period, age groups and groups of diseases.Results: The results showed a large variability in the prevalence of multimorbidity in adults aged 50 and over among European countries. Increase in the prevalence of multimorbidity in the countries of central Europe (Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Germany and Switzerland) and Spain in both sexes, and in the Netherlands among men. Stability was observed in northern and eastern European countries. Musculoskeletal and neurodegenerative groups showed more significant changes in the trend analyses.Conclusions: This information can be useful for policy makers when planning health promotion and prevention policies addressing modifiable risk factors in health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]