SCIENTIFIC ARTICLE OF THE MONTH
The importance of interactions between patients and healthcare professionals for heart failure self-care: A systematic review of qualitative research into patient perspectives
Interactions and relationships with clinicians play a substantial role in patients´ capacity for heart failure selfcare (SC). According to Currie et al. the way professionals interact with patients strongly influences patients’ understanding about their condition and self-care behaviors.
A Cluster Randomized Trial Comparing Strategies for Translating Self-Management Support into Primary Care Practices
Self-management support is a key factor in diabetes care but has not been effectively adopted by primary care practices. The following study improves our understanding of how to advance this important practice-level behaviour.
The Promise of Electronic Health Records to Promote Shared Decision Making: A Narrative Review and a Look Ahead
Electronic health records (EHRs) can support shared decision making (SDM) at every stage of the process. Kuo et al. conducted a literature review revealing that few EHRs have integrated SDM. They refer to a model that suggest different ways various EHR modalities can be used at each step of SDM.
Telehealth for global emergencies: Implications for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)
The importance of using telehealth is especially increasing in times of COVID-19. To be effective, telehealth needs to become a routinely used part of our health system. This article highlights key requirements for this to occur. Implementing telehealth proactively rather that reactively is more likely to generate greater benefits in the long-term.
Health literacy and public health: A systematic review and integration of definitions and models
There is no consensus about the definition of health literacy or about its conceptual dimensions, which limits the possibilities for measurement and comparison. The study proposes an integrated framework capturing the most comprehensive evidence-based dimensions of health literacy.
Lifetime Medical Costs of Obesity: Prevention No Cure for Increasing Health Expenditure
Obesity prevention may be an important and cost-effective way of improving public health, but it is not a cure for increasing health expenditures. This paper estimate the annual and lifetime medical costs attributable to obesity, to compare those to similar costs attributable to smoking, and to discuss the implications for prevention.
Making Europe Health Literate by 2025 – Seven Actions to Promote Health Literacy and Self-Care in the Digital Era
Low health literacy is an important barrier for successful self-management. These policy recommendations set out to engage citizens, policymakers, healthcare professionals and other stakeholders in taking active steps to achieve the ambitious goal of making Europe health literate by 2025.
Obesity prevention and the role of hospital and community-based health services: a scoping review
While clinical guidelines focus on the role of primary healthcare in obesity prevention, what is the role of hospital and community-based health services in adult obesity prevention? This scoping review improves our understanding by examining what the published literature indicates on this matter in order to map the evidence and identify gaps in existing research.
Extensions of the probabilistic ranking metrics of competing treatments in network meta‐analysis to reflect clinically important relative differences on many outcomes
To reflect clinically important relative differences on many outcomes, the paper advances the current ranking methods by extending the P-score method. Network meta-analysis is also applied in COMPAR-EU to analyse the effectiveness of self-management interventions.
Social network influences and the adoption of obesity-related behaviours in adults: a critical interpretative synthesis review
Obesity is a key risk factor for developing a long-term condition and a leading cause of mortality globally. But how do social network properties and processes together with environmental-difference effects influence the adoption of (un)healthy obesity-related behaviours in adults?