Public health
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Quantifying the impact of a disease on society is an important issue for setting priorities for better allocation of healthcare resources and for evaluating the effectiveness of prevention and control of the disease. ⋯ Since 1995, there has been a rapid reduction in the burden of HIV/AIDS on the life expectancy for the US population, especially for black males of working age. These results could provide useful information when evaluating public health improvements and allocating resources for future disease control programmes.
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Systematic research on health and treatment services availability for and utilization by illegal opioid users in Canada are very limited. Comparative data across provinces and territories is almost entirely absent. This study was designed to provide an overview of illegal opioid use and health services utilization among illegal opioid users across Canada. ⋯ Although the opioid use treatment system in Canada has expanded in recent years, especially with respect to the availability of MMT, the treatment utilization rates are still lower than in most countries in Western Europe. Rates of current treatment utilization as well as the relatively high number of overdose deaths suggest that there is still room for improvement in the Canadian health and social care system with respect to opioid use.
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Although injuries constitute a major public health problem worldwide, the magnitude and nature of this problem is difficult to establish in low-income settings due to the lack of valid and representative data. In Nicaragua, several parallel studies have been carried out attempting to assess levels and patterns of injury using various sources of information. The objective of this study was to describe the magnitude and profile of moderate and severe injuries in a well-defined community in Nicaragua. ⋯ This study provides a broad description of injury magnitudes and patterns in a defined Nicaraguan community, and demonstrates the aggregate injury pyramid of the same community. It also identifies the issue of severity and concludes with a recommendation to apply different criteria of severity. Our results support the call for a careful evaluation of injury data sources and severity scores when planning injury prevention programmes.
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Comparative Study
Analysis of regional variation in hip and knee joint replacement rates in England using Hospital Episodes Statistics.
Total hip and knee joint replacements are effective interventions for people with severe arthritis, and demand for these operations appears to be increasing as our population ages. This study explores regional variations in health care and inequalities in the provision of these expensive interventions, which are high on the UK Government's health agenda. ⋯ These data can help to inform planning of services. They suggest that there may be inequities as well as inequalities in the provision of primary joint replacement surgery in England.