The transfer of legal responsibilities from the Central Government to the Autonomous Communities ended a tradition of paying little attention to endangered Spanish flora. The studies undertaken to implement the European Natura 2000 network, and to prepare regional ‘RedData Books’ and lists of protected flora offered amuch better view of which species were really at risk. As a consequence, a gro...

CONTEXT Infection control interventions are important for containing surgery-related infections. For this reason, the modern operating room (OR) should have well-developed infection control policies. The efficacy of these policies depends on how well the OR staff adhere to them. There is a lack of available data documenting adherence to infection control policies. OBJECTIVE To evaluate OR sta...

BACKGROUND The enormous impact of HIV on communities and health services in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean has especially affected nurses, who comprise the largest proportion of the health workforce in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Strengthening action-based leadership for and by nurses is a means to improve the uptake of evidence-informed practices for HIV care. METHODS A p...

Many studies on policy implementation have emphasized the difficulties of putting policies into practice. The paper presents several ways in which Dutch non-profit housing providers incorporate their energy saving policies in their ‘regular’ housing management regarding the existing stock, such as planned preventive maintenance, renovations and other physical improvements. Several housing assoc...

PURPOSE Over the last five years many middle-income Latin American countries have seen a steep increase in the number of cases litigating access to curative services. The purpose of this paper is to explore this complex phenomenon and outline some of its roots and impacts. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH The authors use an interdisciplinary approach based on a literature review and workshops conv...

BACKGROUND There is a growing interest in studying the influence of child-care center policies on the health of preschool-aged children. OBJECTIVE To develop a reliable and valid instrument to quantitatively evaluate the quality of written nutrition and physical activity policies at child-care centers. DESIGN Reliability and validation study. A 65-item measure was created to evaluate five a...

Cross-sector, life-course, and setting approaches are identified in the 2015-2018 Regional Prevention Plan (PRP) of Lombardy Region (Northern Italy) as valuable strategies to ensure the efficacy and sustainable prevention of the non-communicable disease (NCDs). The involvement of non-health sectors in health promotion activities represents a suitable strategy to affect on social, economic, and ...

INTRODUCTION Human resources are the most strategic resource and the most significant input for health systems. Their behavior and motivation can strongly affect the overall performance of the health systems. The aim of this study was to determine the factors that affect motivation in frontline employees at teaching hospitals affiliated with Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences (SBMU)...

Faced with the difficulty of implementing primary health care services as proposed at Alma-Ata, UNICEF and the World Health Organization launched a new public health policy in 1987, the Bamako Initiative, to improve access to health care by revitalizing primary health care. The key principle was to decentralize retention of user fees to the local level in health centers managed by a committee o...

BACKGROUND Street-scale urban design policies are recommended to increase physical activity in communities. Our purpose was to examine U.S. public support for local street-scale urban design features and policies. METHODS Analysis is based on a cross-sectional national sample of adults (n = 4682) participating in the 2006 HealthStyles mail survey. RESULTS About 57% of adults rated local str...