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Anemia affects humans throughout life, and is linked to higher morbidity and mortality. Unclear is whether hemoglobin values are equivalent between women and men. This study evaluates the association of preoperative hemoglobin levels with in-hospital mortality and estimates thresholds for survival equity between men and women. All adult patients undergoing surgery between 2010 and 2019 from 14 German hospitals were included in the study. Thresholds for survival equity were determined with generalized additive models. In total, 842,130 patients with a median in-hospital follow-up time of 7 days were analyzed. During follow-up 20,370 deaths occurred. Preoperative hemoglobin stratified in-hospital mortality (log-rank test p

Mobilizing health, creating access, and improving health should be the primary concerns of today's nursing profession. This article explores the American Academy of Ambulatory Care Nursing's utilization of the American Nurses Credentialing Center's Magnet® Recognition Program as a means to revolutionize health care across all settings to create equity and health for all patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Promoting a child's healthy growth and development in the first six years of life is critical to their later health and well-being. Indigenous infants experience poorer health outcomes than non-Indigenous infants, yet little is understood about how parents access and use health services to optimize their infants' growth and development. Exploring the experiences of Indigenous mothers who select and use early childhood development (ECD) services provides important lessons into how best to promote their access and use of health services. Methods: This qualitative interpretive description study was guided by the Two-Eyed Seeing framework and included interviews with 19 Indigenous mothers of infants less than two years of age and 7 providers of ECD services. Results: Mainstream (public) and Indigenous-led health promotion programs both promoted the access and use of services while Indigenous-led programs further demonstrated an ability to provide culturally safe and trauma and violence-informed care. Conclusions: Providers of Indigenous-led services are best suited to deliver culturally safe care for Indigenous mothers and infants. Providers of mainstream services, however, supported by government policies and funding, can better meet the needs of Indigenous mothers and infants by providing cultural safe and trauma and violence-informed care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Inequality in health and health care is increasing in Sweden. Contributing to widening gaps are various factors that can be assessed by determinants, such as age, educational level, occupation, living area and country of birth. A health care service that can be used as an indicator of health inequality in Sweden is mammographic screening. The non-attendance rate is between 13 and 31 %, while the average is about 20 %. This study aims to shed light on three associations: between municipality and non-attendance, between age and non-attendance, and the interaction of municipality of residence and age in relation to non-attendance. Methods: The study is based on data from the register that identifies attenders and non-attenders of mammographic screening in a Swedish county, namely the Radiological Information System (RIS). Further, in order to provide a socio-demographic profile of the county's municipalities, aggregated data for women in the age range 40-74 in 2012 were retrieved from Statistics Sweden (SCB), the Public Health Agency of Sweden, the National Board of Health and Welfare, and the Swedish Social Insurance Agency. The sample consisted of 52,541 women. Analysis conducted of the individual data were multivariate logistic regressions, and pairwise chi-square tests. Results: The results show that age and municipality of residence associated with non-attendance of mammographic screening. Municipality of residence has a greater impact on non-attendance among women in the age group 70 to 74. For most of the age categories there were differences between the municipalities in regard to non-attendance to mammographic screening. Conclusions: Age and municipality of residence affect attendance of mammographic screening. Since there is one sole and pre-selected mammographic screening facility in the county, distance to the screening facility may serve as one explanation to non-attendance which is a determinant of inequity. From an equity perspective, lack of equal access to health and health care influences facility utilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: The hub-and-spoke model was introduced in the National Health Service (NHS) with the goal of providing equitable access to health care for all. This study uses bilateral breast reduction (BBR) surgery to assess the success of this model in delivering equity of access for plastic surgery within a publicly funded health-care system. This study also assessed the effect of socioeconomic deprivation on patients seeking BBR. The hospital records were used to identify all patients who underwent BBR at the St. John''s Hospital between 1996 and 2005 (N =1081). Patients living outside the catchment area were excluded. Realistic travel distances and times to the hospital and clinics were calculated using patients'' postcodes and geographic information systems (GIS) network analysis. Carstairs deprivation scores were obtained for the residential postcode of each patient. The main findings of this study are (1) accessibility to a plastic surgery clinic is an important factor in determining whether an eligible female patient undergoes BBR and (2) most deprived parts of the catchment area accounted for a significantly greater proportion of patients. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The Chinese public medical care system was established after the 1949 revolution. However, there is no necessary connection between Marxism and the public medical care system; and although the current system may be reasonable from an historical point of view, it can no longer be justified ethically as an all-embracing medical system, since it does not provide equitable health care for the people. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]