1,721,007 research outputs found
The role of economic news in predicting suicides
Full text linkIn this paper we explore the role of media and language used to comment on economic news in nowcasting and forecasting suicides in England and Wales. This is an interesting question, given the large delay in the release of official statistics on suicides. We use a large data set of over 200,000 news articles published in six major UK newspapers from 2001 to 2015 and carry sentiment analysis of the language used to comment on economic news. We extract daily indicators measuring a set of negative emotions that are often associated with poor mental health and use them to explain and forecast national daily suicide figures. We find that highly negative comments on the economic situation in newspaper articles are predictors of higher suicide numbers, especially when using words conveying stronger emotions of fear and despair. Our results suggest that media language carrying very strong, negative feelings is an early signal of a deterioration in a population's mental health
Managing Health Shocks: An Analysis of the Italian Government Approach With the Covid-19
No full textWith the spread of the coronavirus disease across over 100 countries and its status upgraded to that of a pandemic on 11 March 2020 (World Health Organization), increased attention is being placed on the policy measures that may be required to effectively curb the rate of contagion within and across countries. Currently, several governments, such as China, Italy, Spain, Japan and the Republic of Korea, have implemented emergency measures informed by the principle of social distancing to limit the spread of coronavirus (World Health Organization). Ever since the virus was first identified in Wuhan City in December 2019, this succession of uncoordinated policy responses offers a set of natural experiments that should be analysed to understand the successes and failures of containment at the societal level. In this analysis, we focus on the case of Italy, the hardest hit country in Europe (Dong, Du, & Gardner, 2020; World Health Organization). The objective of this short note is to provide an even-handed analysis of the actions taken by the Italian government to cope with the transmission of the virus and to highlight lessons in emergency management that can be learnt for other countries currently facing the onset of the Covid-19 epidemic
Administrative Data and Health Outcome Assessment: Methodology and Application
No full textThe goal of this contribution is to shed light on the benefits for research in health care coming from the use of administrative data, especially in terms of measuring hospitals’ outcomes. The main approaches to health outcome evaluation are reviewed and the possible improvements deriv- ing from the use of administrative data are highlighted. Administrative data may be an essential element in the process of gathering to the pub- lic true rankings of health care organizations, reducing the degree of asymmetric information that typically arises in health care. Patients will be more aware of the best institutions, which will induce most of them to demand to be admitted in them, taking into account the costs associ- ated with distance and with the severity of the illness. This in turn may ask for a reorganization of the sector, closing some organizations and expanding others, having as final goal to improve the health status of the population, without income barriers. This is one of the first attempts to provide an overview of the advantages that administrative data may gather in health care
Studying informal care during the pandemic: mental health, gender and job status
Full text linkUnexpected negative health shocks such as COVID-19 put pressure on households to provide more care to relatives and friends. This study uses data from the UK Household Longitudinal Study to investigate the impact of informal caregiving on mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a difference-in-differences analysis, we find that individuals who started providing care after the pandemic began reported more mental health issues than those who never provided care. Additionally, the gender gap in mental health widened during the pandemic, with women more likely to report mental health issues. We also find that those who began providing care during the pandemic reduced their work hours compared to those who never provided care. Our results suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic has had a negative impact on the mental health of informal caregivers, particularly for women
Informal care, older people, and COVID-19: Evidence from the UK()()
Full text linkThe negative health effects and mortality caused by the COVID-19 pandemic disproportionately fell upon older and disabled people. Protecting these vulnerable groups has been a key policy priority throughout the pandemic and related vaccination campaigns. Using data from the latest survey of the UK Household Longitudinal Study on COVID-19 we found that people who receive informal care have higher probability of being infected when compared to those not receiving informal care. Further, we found that care recipients who are in the lowest income groups have a higher probability of catching the virus when compared to those in the highest income groups. We also estimated the likelihood of being infected for informal carers versus those who did not provide any care during the pandemic and found no significant differences between these two groups. Our empirical findings suggest that the standard measures introduced with the aim of protecting vulnerable groups, such as closing care homes or prioritising the vaccination of their staff, were not sufficient to avoid the spread of the virus amongst disabled and older people. Informal carers play an important role in the social care sector. As such, protecting vulnerable people by investing in the informal care sector should be a priority for future health policy
Empirical Health Economics for Evidence-Based Policies: Some Lessons From Italy
No full textThis chapter pays tribute to Andrew Jones’ research in health programme evaluation, health-risky behaviour and income-related health inequalities by reviewing policy-relevant empirical studies in these domains using Italian data. In the first section, We discuss the impact of reimbursement systems on healthcare behaviour, particularly the transition from incurred-cost-based to prospective systems in hospitals. We explore incentive-driven practices like up-coding and cream skimming, while also considering the potential advantages of primary care incentives and the mixed outcomes associated with cost-sharing schemes. The second section delves into health-risk behaviours in Italy, encompassing substance use, preventive healthcare and responses to health information. The last section presents some evidence on socioeconomic status (SES)-related health disparities and discusses the necessity of accounting for these factors in the Italian National Health Service (NHS)’s resource allocation formula in line with British NHS experience
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
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