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Italy was among the most severely hit European country by COVID-19 pandemic and, just as in other countries, healthcare workers emerged as a group at increased risk of becoming infected with the virus. In fact, according to INAIL almost 70% of all reported occupational injuries is concentrated in the health and social care sector. Nevertheless, to date in Italy – to our knowledge – no research has focused on the possible factors that have jeopardized the protection of this category of workers. Our paper aims to analyze – through currently available data – the impact of different Regional Health Care Systems’ interventions and policies on HCW’s risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection with respect to specific indicators regarding the different responses to Covid-19 adopted by SSR with the aim of preventing the spread of the virus and treating people infected with COVID-19.

Within the literature on health inequalities and social determinants of health, there is a growing interest in studying how the context of residence is able to influence health conditions and health-related outcomes, over and above individual characteristics. Life context affects people's well-being in a material way, through the availability of services and resources, but also through social, cultural and relational resources, to the extent to which people within the same context share norms, values and behaviours affecting their health conditions. In this study, we analysed the association between social cohesion in the context of residence and two health-related outcomes, psycho-physical well-being and self-efficacy, in school-aged children in Lombardy, using data from the Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) study for 2014. The results show a positive association between the variables, indicating that social cohesion matters for young people's health and well-being and suggesting new areas of intervention in policies aiming at promoting health and reducing inequalities.

In recent years, Italian citizens have increasingly been asked to share pharmaceutical costs, but at the same time, households' medicines expenditure has decreased. Cost-sharing policies have to be assessed not just in terms of limitation of moral hazard and revenue to the state, but also for equal opportunities for citizen users accessing health services. The aim of this article is to analyze how Italian co-payment policies (“ticket”) on medicines may affect pharmaceutical expenditure of households, considering territorial and social groups variation. We reviewed the per capita private spending on medicines of Italian regions, separating pharmaceutical outlay and “ticket.” Across the period 2001–2010 we found that the overall per capita private spending on medicines remained substantially stable, although medicine expenditure decreases while the “ticket” increases. When cost sharing rises, out-of-pocket spending on medicines by poorer families seems to remain unchanged; however, poorer families seem to reduce their pharmaceutical expenditure. Our analysis suggests that applying co-payment in Italy is partly successful, in terms of greater revenue to the health system, but in the last few years, cost-sharing increases would seem to have rebounded negatively on more vulnerable families, due to the economic crisis.

Recent studies on international migration have paid special attention to the transnational perspective, a new branch of the sociology of migration studying the process through which migrants build social fields that link the countries of origin and destination. The economic transnationalism connected to the great phenomenon of remittances—financial, material or immaterial—is one relevant aspect of this field of study. Remittances are ambivalent because they can be interpreted either as a medium of consolidation of transnational ties or as a bond linking migrant women to the country of origin. Our target is, in fact, those migrant women who carry out in Italy a particular work of care: the badanti, or informal caregivers. As such, they constitute an important resource of the Italian welfare system, characterized as it is by an important family component. Any migratory phenomenon is, by nature, complex and dynamic, with different historical, economic and social characteristics. Moreover, it operates changes at many levels. The caring work done by badanti, as well as the transnational links represented by cross-border remittances, takes place and must be read within this broader dynamics. The research question for this paper is (exactly) that whether remittances are mainly bonds or mainly ties for badanti, relative to other migrant workers employed in the care sector. We use qualitative and quantitative data from the Prin 2004 research project1 concerning nationality, gender and class in new house holding work in Italy. After describing this phenomenon and its peculiarities, we shall analyze the mechanisms that originate it, and establish correlations with the surrounding context.

Online mutual help experiences may represent an opportunity for people with long-term chronic (LTC) conditions and their caregivers. However, there are very few accounts of or research on online practices of mutual support about such issues. On the other hand, the growth of online experiences of mutual aid has been extensive in recent decades. These experiences have been conventionally classified under the notion of 'online support groups'. However, the notion of group seems to be reductive for the variety of forms, meanings and implications of such experiences. On the basis of these assumptions, our paper aims at: a) describing the main differences between traditional forms of mutual help and online mutual help; b) identifying the emerging forms of online mutual help experience, emphasizing their distinctive features; c) tracing the potential connections between different experiences and people, practitioners and institutions. We identify three main types of online mutual help experience: groups, communities and extemporary practices. We then analyze the value they can have for LTC people, caregivers, practitioners and institutions, emphasizing their heterogeneity. Finally we discuss the overall evolution of the mutual help phenomenon, considering its transition to an online dimension. © 2013 © 2013 Taylor & Francis.

Observing and studying the caregiver phenomenon means, above all, analysing female migration, which is a particular characteristic of Italian immigration. In this paper, we examine and describe the informal caregiver phenomenon in Italy, emphasising the role these women play in the family-based welfare system. We describe the phenomenon, or care work, to analyse the role of the caregiver (as resource and as user) in the Italian welfare system. We argue that these women care workers are isolated from the rest of the Italian community and are not sufficiently integrated within the Italian welfare system. Their presence has transformed the Italian welfare system. © 2012 Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.

The article takes its cue from models of quantitative research applied to complementary/alternative medicine (CAM) and pinpoints some innovative features in the case at issue (Portugal). It goes on to outline new research scenarios moving beyond the either biomedical or CAM framework.

Italy is being forced to re-think her health plan as the national health service moves towards regional systems, individuals take more active responsibility for their health, the demand grows for traditional and non-conventional medicine and immigrants join the user list. Person-centered medicine and ever-wider skills attainable with the tools of analysis and research have made a new professional update indispensable. The proposed Master-Course on "Health systems, traditional and non-conventional medicine", first of its kind in Italy, fits this bill. The new forms of treatment that state and international bodies are prepared to recognize depend entirely on the universities training our professionals with concrete skills in planning, research and health management. Our paper performs an epistemological critique of the new health requirements and goes on to outline the reasons behind this training imperative. © 2011 European Association for Predictive, Preventive and Personalised Medicine.

The study of inequality in health concerns the relationship between socially structured characteristics and health outcomes. Howewer, health disparities are also linked to purely individual characteristics and contextual ones. In particular, the contextual effect at a national level may reflect differences in the functioning and performing of national health institutions, that may be conceived as further determinants of health inequalities. In this work we aim at estimating the effect of education on self-assessed health across European countries, taking into account potential confounders like age, gender and family social background. Using a multilevel model with individuals nested in countries, we can achieve two aims. First, we can see whether countries differ in their average self-assessed health score. Second, we can test our hypothesis about the existence of a European social gradient, that is that education exerts a relatively constant effect on self-assessed health. We develop our models using data from European Social Surveys (88,842 interviews).