Steep Decrease of Gender Difference in DSM-IV Alcohol Use Disorder: A Comparison of Two Nation-wide Surveys Conducted 10 Years Apart in Korea

While decreasing trend in gender differences in alcohol use disorders was reported in Western countries, the change in Asian countries is unknown. This study aims to explore the shifts in gender difference in alcohol abuse (AA) and dependence (AD) in Korea. We compared the data from two nation-wide community surveys to evaluate gender differences in lifetime AA and AD by Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM-IV). Face-to-face interviews using the Composite International Diagnostic Interview (CIDI) were applied to all subjects in 2001 (n=6,220) and 2011 (n=6,022). Male-to-female ratio of odds was decreased from 6.41 (95% CI, 4.81-8.54) to 4.37 (95% CI, 3.35-5.71) for AA and from 3.75 (95% CI, 2.96-4.75) to 2.40 (95% CI, 1.80-3.19) for AD. Among those aged 18-29, gender gap even became statistically insignificant for AA (OR, 1.59; 95% CI, 0.97-2.63) and AD (OR, 1.18; 95% CI, 0.80-2.41) in 2011. Men generally showed decreased odds for AD (0.55; 95% CI, 0.45-0.67) and women aged 30-39 showed increased odds for AA (2.13; 95% CI 1.18-3.84) in 2011 compared to 2001. Decreased AD in men and increased AA in women seem to contribute to the decrease of gender gap. Increased risk for AA in young women suggests needs for interventions.     

Utilization of social workers in home care: An analysis of service use

ABSTRACT

Social workers are well positioned to address mental health complications impacting home care populations, yet social work has one of the lowest utilization rates of offered home care supports in Ontario. This study analyzed care plan data of frontline in-home social work services. Results identified adjustment to illness as the most common category and that seniors required significantly fewer visits and days on service than non-seniors. Most patients were able to accomplish their social work-based goals. Results highlight a need for further research and for capitalizing on the untapped potential value of social work home care services for patients.     

新型冠状病毒肺炎流行期间大学生压力状况及影响因素

目的 了解新型冠状病毒肺炎流行期间大学生压力状况及影响因素，为减轻其压力负荷提供依据。方法 采用压力负荷量表（Stress Overload Scale, SOS）和社会支持量表 (Social Support Rate Score，SSRS)通过便利抽样的方法对466名浙江省某高校大学生进行调查，采用t检验、方差分析、相关分析和多元回归分析进行统计学处理。结果 调查对象的SOS得分（70.35±10.21）分，SSRS得分（33.14±6.18）分，两者呈负相关（r = - 0.672，P＜0.01）。多因素分析显示，社会支持、是否来自疫情严重地区、是否贫困生、是否大四年级共同影响大学生的压力负荷（F = 26.438，P＜0.001）。结论 新冠肺炎流行期间大学生的压力负荷较大，要针对重点人群及时开展有助于改善大学生身心健康的干预措施，舒缓压力负荷。     

医院离退休干部参与社会治理现状

通过文献研究、问卷调查、专家访谈、现地调研等方法,分析医院离退休干部参与社会治理的现状及影响因素,探讨社区对离退休干部参与社会治理的需求,提出通过党建引领医院离退休干部参与社会治理的“1235”模式,并给出具体的操作路径,以期为推动医院离退休干部积极参与社会治理提供参考。     

Perceptions of plain cigarette packaging among smokers and non-smokers in Andalusia (Spain)

ObjectivesEach year tobacco is responsible for 650,000 deaths in Europe and 55,000 in Spain. With tobacco advertising and promotion banned in Spain and most of Europe, the last bastion of marketing is the packaging. Plain tobacco packaging —which involves packs having a standardised appearance— has been proposed to counter this. The objective of this study is to research perceptions arising from the plain packaging of tobacco products.MethodsWe employed a qualitative research methodology -focus groups- with smokers and non-smokers in in two medium-sized Andalusian towns (Spain).ResultsResults show the importance of plain cigarette packaging as a form of promotion, particularly among women and young people, how pack colour influences product perceptions, and how removing full branding increases the salience of the warnings.ConclusionsPlain packaging, combined with pictorial health warnings, may reduce the capacity of packaging to be distinctive and a badge product. Altering pack design in such a way would make it more difficult for tobacco companies to create a favourable image of their brands and may help to reinforce the ability of the population to protect themselves from the dangers of smoking.     

Accounting for failure: risk-based regulation and the problems of ensuring healthcare quality in the NHS

In this paper, we examine why risk-based policy instruments have failed to improve the proportionality, effectiveness, and legitimacy of healthcare quality regulation in the National Health Service (NHS) in England. Rather than trying to prevent all possible harms, risk-based approaches promise to rationalise and manage the inevitable limits of what regulation can hope to achieve by focusing regulatory standard-setting and enforcement activity on the highest priority risks, as determined through formal assessments of their probability and consequences. As such, risk-based approaches have been enthusiastically adopted by healthcare quality regulators over the last decade. However, by drawing on historical policy analysis and in-depth interviews with 15 high-level UK informants in 2013–2015, we identify a series of practical problems in using risk-based policy instruments for defining, assessing, and ensuring compliance with healthcare quality standards. Based on our analysis, we go on to consider why, despite a succession of failures, healthcare regulators remain committed to developing and using risk-based approaches. We conclude by identifying several preconditions for successful risk-based regulation: goals must be clear and trade-offs between them amenable to agreement; regulators must be able to reliably assess the probability and consequences of adverse outcomes; regulators must have a range of enforcement tools that can be deployed in proportion to risk; and there must be political tolerance for adverse outcomes.     

护理专业大学生的复原力状况

目的:研究护理专业大学生复原力的情况,分析影响其复原力的因素,进而有针对性地对大学生进行必要的心理干预及预防,为有效开展大学生心理健康教育提供参考和依据。方法:在广东药学院大一~大四护理专业本科生中,随机抽取358名进行问卷调查,采用由刘兰兰编制的大学生复原力量表,并用SPSS 19.0做统计分析。结果:1护理本科生在性别方面总体复原力有显著差异,女生的总体复原力水平高于男生(F=5.001,P0.05);2在社会交往方面,不同年级存在显著差异,四年级的复原力水平最高(F=7.687,P0.05);在家庭支持方面,不同性别间的差异有统计学意义(t=2.251,P0.05);独生子女与非独生子女间的差异有统计学意义(t=2.203,P0.05)。在朋友支持方面,不同性别间的差异有统计学意义(t=3.629,P0.05);独生子女与非独生子女间的差异有统计学意义(t=1.990,P0.05)。在自我掌控方面,不同年级间的差异有统计学意义(F=3.045,P0.05);不同性别间的差异有统计学意义(t=2.105,P0.05)。结论:护理专业女生比男生的总体复原力水平高。社会交往、家庭支持、朋友支持、自我掌控等维度影响大学生复原力水平。     

Filtering big data from social media – Building an early warning system for adverse drug reactions

ObjectivesAdverse drug reactions (ADRs) are believed to be a leading cause of death in the world. Pharmacovigilance systems are aimed at early detection of ADRs. With the popularity of social media, Web forums and discussion boards become important sources of data for consumers to share their drug use experience, as a result may provide useful information on drugs and their adverse reactions. In this study, we propose an automated ADR related posts filtering mechanism using text classification methods. In real-life settings, ADR related messages are highly distributed in social media, while non-ADR related messages are unspecific and topically diverse. It is expensive to manually label a large amount of ADR related messages (positive examples) and non-ADR related messages (negative examples) to train classification systems. To mitigate this challenge, we examine the use of a partially supervised learning classification method to automate the process.MethodsWe propose a novel pharmacovigilance system leveraging a Latent Dirichlet Allocation modeling module and a partially supervised classification approach. We select drugs with more than 500 threads of discussion, and collect all the original posts and comments of these drugs using an automatic Web spidering program as the text corpus. Various classifiers were trained by varying the number of positive examples and the number of topics. The trained classifiers were applied to 3000 posts published over 60 days. Top-ranked posts from each classifier were pooled and the resulting set of 300 posts was reviewed by a domain expert to evaluate the classifiers.ResultsCompare to the alternative approaches using supervised learning methods and three general purpose partially supervised learning methods, our approach performs significantly better in terms of precision, recall, and the F measure (the harmonic mean of precision and recall), based on a computational experiment using online discussion threads from Medhelp.ConclusionsOur design provides satisfactory performance in identifying ADR related posts for post-marketing drug surveillance. The overall design of our system also points out a potentially fruitful direction for building other early warning systems that need to filter big data from social media networks.     

Responsabilidad social corporativa en los centros de la red hospitalaria de utilización pública de Cataluña

The adoption of a management approach that integrates corporate social responsibility in organizations is an increasing trend that responds to the demands of society related to sustainability, ethics and transparency. Health organizations are adopting corporate social responsibility asymmetrically, which raises the analysis of the implementation models and the developed initiatives. Through qualitative research, with four in-depth case studies of the Catalan health sector, this article analyzes the need to address this new approach and to identify good practices and the challenges for its implementation.