Improving Healthcare Quality in Europe Characteristics, Effectiveness and Implementation of Different Strategies


Book Description

This volume, developed by the Observatory together with OECD, provides an overall conceptual framework for understanding and applying strategies aimed at improving quality of care. Crucially, it summarizes available evidence on different quality strategies and provides recommendations for their implementation. This book is intended to help policy-makers to understand concepts of quality and to support them to evaluate single strategies and combinations of strategies.




Prevention of Substance Use


Book Description

This volume provides a serious examination of substance use prevention research and practice as components of the continuum from health promotion through to prevention and health care in sub-groups and in the general population. Extensive background chapters provide portals into the evolution of the field and the cutting edge research being conducted on the etiology, epidemiology, and genetics of substance use and abuse. The global nature and health burden of substance use and abuse incorporates assessments of the serious problems related to the prevention of legal substance use (i.e., alcohol and tobacco) and how lessons learned in those arenas may apply to the prevention of illicit substance use. Research and practice chapters detail a range of effective evidence-based programs, policies and practices and emerging prevention interventions from the literatures on the family and school contexts in addition to innovations involving mindfulness and the social media. Continued advancements in substance use prevention research, practice, training, and policy are projected. Included among topics addressed are: Progression of substance use to abuse and substance use disorders The tobacco prevention experience: a model for substance use prevention? Policy interventions: intended and unintended influences on substance use Qualitative methods in the study of psychoactive substance use Use of media and social media in the prevention of substance use Supporting prevention science and prevention research internationally The array of research accomplishments and real-world methods presented in Prevention of Substance Use merits the attention of a variety of researchers and practitioners, including public health professionals, health psychologists, and epidemiologists.




The Cambridge Handbook of International Prevention Science


Book Description

The Cambridge Handbook of International Prevention Science offers a comprehensive global overview on prevention science with the most up-to-date research from around the world. Over 100 scholars from 27 different countries (including Australia, Bhutan, Botswana, India, Israel, Mexico, Singapore, South Korea, Spain and Thailand) contributed to this volume, which covers a wide range of topics important to prevention science. It includes major sections on the foundations of prevention as well as examples of new initiatives in the field, detailing current prevention efforts across the five continents. A unique and innovative volume, The Cambridge Handbook of International Prevention Science is a valuable resource for established scholars, early professionals, students, practitioners and policy-makers.




Assuring the Quality of Health Care in the European Union


Book Description

People have always travelled within Europe for work and leisure, although never before with the current intensity. Now, however, they are travelling for many other reasons, including the quest for key services such as health care. Whatever the reason for travelling, one question they ask is "If I fall ill, will the health care I receive be of a high standard?" This book examines, for the first time, the systems that have been put in place in all of the European Union's 27 Member States. The picture it paints is mixed. Some have well developed systems, setting standards based on the best available evidence, monitoring the care provided, and taking action where it falls short. Others need to overcome significant obstacles.




Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation in Practice


Book Description

The authoritative clinical handbook promoting excellence and best practice Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation in Practice is a comprehensive, practitioner-focused clinical handbook which provides internationally applicable evidence-based standards of good practice. Edited and written by a multidisciplinary team of experts from the British Association for Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation (BACPR), this book is invaluable for practitioners helping people with heart disease return to health. The text provides an overview of research findings, examines the core components of cardiac rehabilitation, and discusses how to support healthier lifestyles and reduce the risks of recurrence. Now in its second edition, this textbook has been fully revised to incorporate recent clinical evidence and align with current national and international guidelines. Increased emphasis is placed on an integrated approach to cardiac rehabilitation programmes, whilst six specified standards and six core components are presented to promote sustainable health outcomes. Describes how cardiovascular prevention and rehabilitation programmes can be delivered to meet standards of good practice Covers a broad range of topics including: promoting health behaviour change to improve lifestyle risk factors, supporting psycho-social health, managing medical risk factors, and how to develop long-term health strategies Emphasises the importance of early programme commencement with assessment and reassessment of patient goals and outcomes, and gives examples of strategies to achieve these Discusses the role of programme audit and certification of meeting minimum standards of practice Looks to the future and how delivery of cardiovascular prevention and rehabilitation programmes internationally will need to meet common challenges Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation in Practice is an indispensable resource for all health professionals involved in cardiac rehabilitation and cardiovascular disease prevention.







Facing Addiction in America


Book Description

All across the United States, individuals, families, communities, and health care systems are struggling to cope with substance use, misuse, and substance use disorders. Substance misuse and substance use disorders have devastating effects, disrupt the future plans of too many young people, and all too often, end lives prematurely and tragically. Substance misuse is a major public health challenge and a priority for our nation to address. The effects of substance use are cumulative and costly for our society, placing burdens on workplaces, the health care system, families, states, and communities. The Report discusses opportunities to bring substance use disorder treatment and mainstream health care systems into alignment so that they can address a person's overall health, rather than a substance misuse or a physical health condition alone or in isolation. It also provides suggestions and recommendations for action that everyone-individuals, families, community leaders, law enforcement, health care professionals, policymakers, and researchers-can take to prevent substance misuse and reduce its consequences.




Pain Management and the Opioid Epidemic


Book Description

Drug overdose, driven largely by overdose related to the use of opioids, is now the leading cause of unintentional injury death in the United States. The ongoing opioid crisis lies at the intersection of two public health challenges: reducing the burden of suffering from pain and containing the rising toll of the harms that can arise from the use of opioid medications. Chronic pain and opioid use disorder both represent complex human conditions affecting millions of Americans and causing untold disability and loss of function. In the context of the growing opioid problem, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) launched an Opioids Action Plan in early 2016. As part of this plan, the FDA asked the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to convene a committee to update the state of the science on pain research, care, and education and to identify actions the FDA and others can take to respond to the opioid epidemic, with a particular focus on informing FDA's development of a formal method for incorporating individual and societal considerations into its risk-benefit framework for opioid approval and monitoring.