Search

Land, food, energy, water and climate are linked and interconnected into a Nexus, characterized by complexity and feedbacks. An integrated management of the Nexus is critical to understand conflicts/synergies and secure efficient and sustainable use of resources, especially under climate change. The Nexus perspective is applied to Sardinia, as regional case study, to better understand and improve integrated resource management and relevant policy initiatives. Vulnerability of Sardinia Nexus is assessed under several climate projections by articulated balances of resources (water, energy) availability and sustainable development goals, at regional and sub-regional scales, accounting for demands and conflicts among key economic sectors (agriculture, hydro-power, tourism).

Objective. To analyze breakfast consumption, regularity of meals, fruit and vegetable consumption in the Italian university student population on a national level. Design. Descriptive analysis evaluating data taken from the Sportello Salute Giovani (SSG) questionnaire. Participants. 12 000 university students who self-administered a confidential survey. 8292 questionnaires were analyzed. Variables measured. Age; sex; self-reported economic status; BMI; number of breakfast and portions of vegetables and portions of fruit usually consumed per week; number of eating episodes per day; intended weight loss. Analysis. Descriptive and logistic regression analyses were conducted. Gender and age differences were tested by c2 and Mann-Whitney tests. Results. 15.8% of males and 26.3% of females declared to consume at least one portion of fruit every day. Similar results were found for vegetable consumption. Age does not influence fruit or vegetables consumption, frequency of eating episodes or breakfast habit. Both a regular breakfast and a higher number of eating episodes are significantly associated both with a higher frequency of fruit and vegetables intake. Conclusions and implications. This study underlines the need to promote nutritional education campaigns to increase adherence to nutritional guidelines.

INTRODUCTION: Health is defined as a state of complete physical, social and mental well-being, therefore, it should not be considered as simply the absence of disease. In this light, the assessment of self-perceived health and life satisfaction plays an important role as it allows addressing the subjective perception of physical health, as well as mental health and social functioning. MATERIAL AND METHODS: This study analyzed data from 8516 university students enrolled in the "Sportello Salute Giovani" project ("Youth Health Information Desk"). In particular, it addressed self-perceived health and life satisfaction, reported somatic and psychological symptoms and ability to cope with daily problems of university students from 18 to 30 years old. RESULTS: Overall, 77.1% of students declared to have a good or very good health and the mean score of life satisfaction was 7.46. In respect to somatic and psychological symptoms, 25.8% of students reported to suffer almost daily of at least one among headache, stomach pain, back pain, tiredness, nervousness, dizziness and troubles falling asleep. Results varied on the basis of sex, with women showing lower self-perceived health compared to men and reporting more symptoms. Furthermore, self-perceived health was shown better in younger students and in those belonging to higher socio-economic level. DISCUSSION: The survey showed that concern exists with respect to university students' self-perceived health, which is different from that arising from other evidence. Female students had a significant lower self-perceived health and reported somatic and psychological symptoms more commonly than men. On the other hand, results about life satisfaction seem to be aligned with the literature. CONCLUSION: One of the most important implications of the study is the need to address self-perceived health and reported symptoms in university students in order to monitor them and initiate interventions aimed at improving well-being and contro

This article describes methodological issues of the "Sportello Salute Giovani" project ("Youth Health Information Desk"), a multicenter study aimed at assessing the health status and attitudes and behaviours of university students in Italy.

L'articolo mette in luce il ruolo della storia della medicina nella formazione del futuro medico.Viene privilegiata la prospettiva etico-antropologica.

A case of congenital rubella syndrome has been the reason to seek damages but a Civil Court of Rome sentenced against this and in favor of sued doctors. We discussed the high level of social attention and the feeling present in our western culture behind the request for damages. Legal considerations above the Italian abortion Law is provided to understand the framework of the court decision. Ethical, medical, and public health issues are commented and compared with the Perruche’s case.

Ethical analysis within Health Technology Assessment (HTA) – a comprehensive form of policy research that examines the short- and long- term consequences of the application or use of technologies (in a broad meaning) – aims at analysing the moral questions raised by the technology itself and by the consequences of implementing/not implementing a health technology as well as ethical issues that are inherent in the HTA process. The work intends to assess, within a HTA process, the ethical consequences of implementing the Electronic Medical Diary (EMD) in health care systems. The EMD is a device for supporting the daily registration and collection of clinical events related to a certain patient. The stor-age of these patient-specific clinical data constitutes the patient database (PDB) that may be connected with the many online tools which can improve the flow of information within the hospital information system. Such devices should be able to replace the traditional paper record.

“HTA is a multidisciplinary process that summarizes information about the medical, social, economic and ethical issues related to the use of a health technology in a systematic, transparent, unbiased, robust manner. Its aim is to inform the formulation of safe, effective, health policies that are patient focused, and seek to achieve best value” (EUnetHTA 2007). Even though the assessment of ethical aspects of a health technology is listed as one of the objectives of a HTA process, in practice, the integration of these dimensions into reports remains limited. The article is focused on four points: 1. the HTA concept; 2. the difficult HTA-ethics relationship; 3. the ethical issues in HTA; 4. the methods for integrating ethical analysis into HTA.