European journal of public health
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Eur J Public Health · Feb 2014
Employment consequences of depressive symptoms and work demands individually and combined.
Denmark, like other Western countries, is recently burdened by increasingly high social spending on employment consequences caused by ill mental health. This might be the result of high work demands affecting persons with ill mental health. Therefore, this study assesses to what extent depressive symptoms and high work demands, individually and combined, have an effect on employment consequences. ⋯ Persons with depressive symptoms might have an increased risk of negative employment consequences irrespective of the kind and amount of work demands. This might be an effect on the level of work ability in general as well as partly the result of health selection and co-morbidity.
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Eur J Public Health · Feb 2014
Economic impacts of environmentally attributable childhood health outcomes in the European Union.
There is increasing evidence of the role that exposure to industrial chemicals plays in the development of childhood disease. The USA and the European Union (EU) have taken divergent policy approaches to managing this issue, and economic estimates of disease costs attributable to environmental exposures in children are available in the USA but not the EU. We undertook the first economic evaluation of the impacts of childhood environmental chemical exposures in the EU. ⋯ Childhood chemical exposures present a significant economic burden to the EU. Our study offers an important baseline of disease costs before the implementation of Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals, which is important for studying the impacts of this policy regime.
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Eur J Public Health · Dec 2013
Out-of-pocket payments for health care services in Bulgaria: financial burden and barrier to access.
In recent years, Bulgaria has increasingly relied on out-of-pocket payments as one of the main sources of health care financing. However, it is largely unknown whether the official patient charges, combined with informal payments, are affordable for the population. Our study aimed to explore the scale of out-of-pocket payments for health care services and their affordability. ⋯ The high level of both formal and informal out-of-pocket payments for health care services in Bulgaria poses a considerable burden for households and undermines access to health services for poorer parts of the population.
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Eur J Public Health · Dec 2013
Ethnic variations in unplanned readmissions and excess length of hospital stay: a nationwide record-linked cohort study.
Studies in the USA have shown ethnic inequalities in quality of hospital care, but in Europe, this has never been analysed. We explored variations in indicators of quality of hospital care by ethnicity in the Netherlands. ⋯ We found significant ethnic variations in unplanned readmissions and excess LOS. These differences may be interpretable as shortcomings in the quality of hospital care delivered to ethnic minority patients, but exclusion of alternative explanations (such as differences in patient- and community-level factors, which are outside hospitals' control) requires further research. To quantify potential ethnic inequities in hospital care in Europe, we need empirical prospective cohort studies with solid quality outcomes such as adverse event rates.