All health care providers may be confronted by a Muslim patient, but many health care professionals are lacking basic knowledge on the Muslim faith and medical ethics based on Islamic law (Shariah). One must endeavour to differentiate between ethnic customs and Islamic tradition. It is important for staff to have a general understanding of the principles of Islamic beliefs and actions to attain...

BACKGROUND Chronic diseases are a leading contributor to work disability and job loss in Europe. Recent EU policies aim to improve job retention among chronically ill employees. Disability and occupational health researchers argue that this requires a coordinated and pro-active approach at the workplace by occupational health professionals, line managers (LMs) and human resource managers (HRM)....

OBJECTIVE To develop a model of consumer perceptions of electronic personal health records (PHRs) and validate it in a comparative study between consumers who report having a chronic illness and those who report being well. MATERIALS AND METHODS A model of PHR use motivators and barriers was built and tested through a national survey across Canada. Data were collected from 800 individuals, 18...

The primary objective of the Australian Peer Support Mandate and the community it represents is to build a value based body of evidence. Guiding policy and legislation by researching alternative methods of delivering mental health services through the use of surveys, peer forums, open conferences and meetings relative to the great need of providing better outcomes for those experiencing mental ...

As reforms to China's health care system have raised costs to users in recent decades, studies suggest that ill health has become intimately tied to social stratification as both a precipitant and a consequence of poverty. The problem may be particularly pronounced in China’s poorest rural populations. Focusing on Gansu Province, one of China’s poorest, this paper investigates the possibility t...

Bipartisan interest is growing in Congress for using federal tax credits to help low-income families buy health insurance. Regardless of the approach taken, tax credit policies must address risk selection issues to ensure coverage for the chronically ill. Proposals that link tax credits to purchasing pools would avoid risk selection by grouping risks similar to the way large employers do. Volun...

The words "stress" and "strain" in association with ill-health have in the past few years become commonplace, not only in the vocabulary of medical men, but in everyday speech. The man in the street talks of a friend getting ill or having a nervous breakdown under the strain of overwork ; the doctor talks of a stress condition, and includes under this heading a lengthening list of clinical diso...