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Background: Palliative care is insufficiently integrated in the continuum of care for older people. It is unclear to what extent healthcare policy for older people includes elements of palliative care and thus supports its integration. Aim: (1) To develop a reference framework for identifying palliative care contents in policy documents; (2) to determine inclusion of palliative care in public policy documents on healthcare for older people in 13 rapidly ageing countries. Design: Directed documentary analysis of public policy documents (legislation, policies/strategies, guidelines, white papers) on healthcare for older people. Using existing literature, we developed a reference framework and data extraction form assessing 10 criteria of palliative care inclusion. Country experts identified documents and extracted data. Setting: Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, England, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Singapore, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain. Results: Of 139 identified documents, 50 met inclusion criteria. The most frequently addressed palliative care elements were coordination and continuity of care (12 countries), communication and care planning, care for family, and ethical and legal aspects (11 countries). Documents in 10 countries explicitly mentioned palliative care, nine addressed symptom management, eight mentioned end-of-life care, and five referred to existing palliative care strategies (out of nine that had them). Conclusions: Health care policies for older people need revising to include reference to end-of-life care and dying and ensure linkage to existing national or regional palliative care strategies. The strong policy focus on care coordination and continuity in policies for older people is an opportunity window for palliative care advocacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pharmaceutical companies frequently engage in drug advertising to connect with potential buyers. In the competitive pharmaceutical market, where patients are highly sensitive to various forms of advertising, manufacturers aim to reach a broad audience. This rapid dissemination of information in the advertising of medicinal products leads to some details being unverified and inaccurate, which emphasizes the critical importance of establishing and enforcing legislation. This paper aims to evaluate the current legislation for advertising of medicinal products in Republic of North Macedonia, as well as the regulations in European Union member states, namely Germany, Slovenia and Spain. The basic legal act that regulates the advertising of medicinal products in the European Union is Directive 2001/83/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of Europe of 6 November 2001 on the Community code relating to medicinal products for human use such as amended by Directive 2004/27/EC of 31 March 2004. By reviewing relevant literature and conducting a comparative analysis of regulations in the Republic of North Macedonia and European Union, it can be concluded that the European Directive serves as a foundational framework. Each country has transposed the European Directive in domestic laws and regulatory guidelines with local adaptations and all Member States have therefore adopted further specific measures concerning the advertising of medicinal products. Depending on the member state, pharmaceutical promotion can be monitored and controlled by the government, by a national competent authority or not, this approach is called “self-regulation.Upon examining the regulatory structures in each specific country, there are five key components that must be implemented: development and adoption of national laws and regulations; implementation of the regulation, codes and other standards; monitoring the pharmaceutical promotion to ensure compliance with legal regulations; enforcement of the law through suitable sanctions to prevent violations; and evaluation of regulatory efficiency. Drawing parallels between the practices of established European member states and the regulatory framework of the Republic of North Macedonia, it becomes evident that there is an opportunity for the Republic of North Macedonia to leverage positive experiences from the European countries. By incorporating successful elements of European member states' regulations, the Republic of North Macedonia could enhance its own pharmaceutical regulatory environment. Based on this evaluation of established practices and experiences in European countries, direction will be provided for harmonizing and improving the regulatory framework for advertising od medicinal products in the Republic of North Macedonia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to identify the literacy skills of individuals whose highest level of education was in the field 'teacher training and educational sciences'. The study sample comprised 10,618 individuals in the field of teacher training and educational sciences, selected from 31 countries (participating in the International Adult Skills Assessment Programme during the 2014-2015 survey) using a multi-stage sampling method. The study employed multi-level latent class analysis and three-step analysis in order to determine both the number of multi-level latent classes of educators' literacy scores as well as the selected independent variables' success in predicting those latent classes. The analysis revealed that educators in Germany constituted the group with the highest literacy skills while educators from Singapore comprised the group with the lowest literacy skills. [This study was presented at the 9th International Congress of Educational Research. Ordu University, Ordu, Turkey.]

The study aims to understand the foremost challenges in the transition to online teaching and learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study adopts the PRISMA approach to screening the selection of journal articles and review papers according to the research aims and the inclusion criteria. The journal articles and review papers were extracted and stored in Microsoft Excel and Google Scholar, Academic. Microsoft, Semantic Scholar, Elsevier, and Emerald Insight databases searched relevant documents using formulated keywords. A statistical technique was applied using the M.S. Excel analysis tool (PivotTable and an independent t-Test) to analyze data and determine the differences between teachers and students. The review revealed the evidence that the majority of the studies were primarily focused on the individual developing countries and results from other developing countries were not considered. In addition, the foremost challenges in the transition to online teaching and learning during the COVID-19 pandemic were inadequate skills and training, inadequate Internet/Infrastructure, lack of supporting resources and lack of online student engagement and feedback. Finally, the independent t-test reveals there is no statistically significant difference in challenges in the transition to online teaching and learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Both teachers and students encounter similar challenges. The systematic review raised concerns that higher learning needs to effectively implement long term strategies and support teachers and students in getting into online teaching and learning.

The aim of this paper is to examine characteristics of cooperation among manufacturing firms from Slovenia and Spain in R&D, production and services. The paper presents results from the largest European research on characteristics of manufacturing firms. The research is performed in more than 10 countries with an extensive survey in manufacturing firms with at least 20 employees. In this paper the results are analysed with the use of descriptive statistics. The results of the research are divided into three main parts. First we identified both countries' cooperation patterns and we compare our findings with some other European countries. Second we brings valuable additional information on each pattern and further data on detailed parameters, such as geographical proximity, networking, formality of cooperation and financial performance. Finally, we explore the relationship between cooperation and a special area of competitiveness, namely services. The main conclusion from the research was that Slovenian firms are engaging in cooperative agreements much more often than the Spanish ones. The paper presents several explanations of this fact. There are, however, some limitations of the research, especially in the service area: when observing the number of responses related to service performance measures only relatively few valid responses were accounted. The biggest value of the paper is the fact the most researchers focus just on R&D cooperation. The authors of this paper have included also other parts of manufacturing value chain, where a special emphasis is on the services as a very popular topic in today's operations management research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To make society more sustainable, cleaner transportation technologies, such as zero-emission vehicles and sustainable mobility, are being investigated, promoted, and supported by different policy measures. The emphasis of this paper is determining the zero-emission vehicle features that can influence specific policy recommendations; this understanding can boost zero-emission vehicle use as a potential cleaner transportation technology among different consumer segments in different EU member states. A customer-oriented study of over 1500 Slovenians, Spaniards, and Poles revealed the most relevant zero-emission vehicle-purchasing features are: (a) vehicle price and (b) fuel economy. The percentage of potential zero-emission vehicle buyers is said to rise to 80% should the price of electric cars decrease and fuel price increase accordingly, i.e. by 30% and 50%, respectively. Concerning the car price, Slovenian and Polish consumers' preferences are similar, and 40% of them (and up to 85% of Spaniards) would consider buying one if the price drops by 25%. Women in all three studied countries are more interested in zero-emission vehicles than men are. Different policies should be used in Poland, where people are not as interested in zero-emission vehicles as Spanish and Slovenian consumers are. Customer segmentation in all three groups pointed out that Poland has the highest share (19%) of "No-green" consumers, whereas Spain has the highest share (60%) of "Go-green" consumers, i.e. consumers who would consider buying a zero-emission vehicle in the foreseeable future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Background:The European Disability Strategy (2010–2020) seeks to significantly raise the proportion of people with disabilities working in the open labour market. The ERGO WORK project is a collaboration of academic and industrial partners in six European countries, focused on understanding and tackling barriers to workplace inclusion for workers with disabilities. Methods:This study sought to explore the perceptions and needs of stakeholders in terms of workplace adaptation to the needs of employees with disabilities. An exploratory online survey was completed by 480 participants across six countries. Results:The analysis suggests that workplaces could be further improved to meet the needs of employees with considerable scope for training within companies to raise awareness about employees’ needs, employers’ obligations and workplace adaptation. Conclusions:This snapshot suggests there is still a gap between intent and reality in workplace inclusion and further strategies are needed to improve the opportunities for employees with disabilities. The paper argues that ergonomics may have a key role to play in tackling these challenges and adapting the workplace environment and job design to suit the needs of individual employees.Implications for rehabilitationThis study suggests there is considerable scope for workplace adaptation and improvements to meet the needs of employees with disabilities.Employers need and want further specialist practitioner guidance to facilitate workplace inclusion and support adaptation to individual needs.Organisations would benefit from training to raise awareness about potential solutions and approaches that would support more widespread employment of people with disabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Background: Adolescent depression has been recognized as a complex problem that presents a global public health challenge. Left undetected and untreated, depression can significantly reduce quality of life. Objective: The main purpose of this paper is to re-visit risk and protective factors for depression in adolescents with a specific focus on exploring the individual, familial, and social contexts of depression (especially high and very high depression levels) in a multi-country sample of youth in order to see if these factors are mitigated by cultural location. Methods: Questionnaire data from a cross-sectional study of a randomly selected sample of 5149 middle-school students from four EU-countries (Austria, Germany, Slovenia, and Spain) was used. Applying variance analysis, we examined the prediction strength for the observed risk and protective factors. Results: In all participating countries we show that in for both male and female adolescents, depression is linked to a broad range of interactive individual, and social protective and risk factors, such that even if the contribution of a single factor is low but still significant and this factor's prediction strength is low or moderate, taken together, the cumulative prediction strength of these factors yields a remarkably similar coefficient of determination of 42-49% in all samples. Conclusions: We have established a significant and relevant combination of the individual and social multifactorial risk and protective factors that characterize depression in adolescents of both genders, no matter their country of location and with that, we call for a multifaceted and comprehensive approach to mental health assessment, prevention and intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: End-of-life (EoL) care volunteers in hospitals are a novel approach to support patients and their close ones. The iLIVE Volunteer Study supported hospital volunteer coordinators from five European countries to design and implement an EoL care volunteer service on general wards in their hospitals. This study aimed to identify and explore barriers and facilitators to the implementation of EoL care volunteer services in the five hospitals. Methods: Volunteer coordinators (VCs) from the Netherlands (NL), Norway (NO), Slovenia (SI), Spain (ES) and United Kingdom (UK) participated in a focus group interview and subsequent in-depth one-to-one interviews. A theory-inspired framework based on the five domains of the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR) was used for data collection and analysis. Results from the focus group were depicted in radar charts per hospital. Results: Barriers across all hospitals were the COVID-19 pandemic delaying the implementation process, and the lack of recognition of the added value of EoL care volunteers by hospital staff. Site-specific barriers were struggles with promoting the service in a highly structured setting with many stakeholders (NL), negative views among nurses on hospital volunteering (NL, NO), a lack of support from healthcare professionals and the management (SI, ES), and uncertainty about their role in implementation among VCs (ES). Site-specific facilitators were training of volunteers (NO, SI, NL), involving volunteers in promoting the service (NO), and education and awareness for healthcare professionals about the role and boundaries of volunteers (UK). Conclusion: Establishing a comprehensive EoL care volunteer service for patients in non-specialist palliative care wards involves multiple considerations including training, creating awareness and ensuring management support. Implementation requires involvement of stakeholders in a way that enables medical EoL care and volunteering to co-exist. Further research is needed to explore how trust and equal partnerships between volunteers and professional staff can be built and sustained. Trial registration: NCT04678310. Registered 21/12/2020. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: The contemporary scientific literature indicates that numeracy is a multifaceted concept. The ongoing societal and technological transformations underscore the imperative to re-evaluate the attributes characterizing a numerate individual and the strategic initiatives that policymakers should devise and implement to ensure that individuals are not marginalized from participation in public and private domains due to their lack of numeracy proficiency. Numerous empirical investigations on numeracy consistently affirm its pivotal role in enabling individuals to engage autonomously across diverse contexts within their daily lives. However, numeracy’s fundamental role has often been neglected in our societies. The present study scrutinizes the overarching challenges associated with numeracy, particularly emphasizing the challenges regarding healthcare, finance, and the critical utilization and interpretation of data awareness. Methods: A two-phase research framework was adopted to address this inquiry. A comprehensive literature review was conducted to discern the prevalent challenges regarding numeracy awareness. Subsequently, two illustrative case studies were undertaken in Slovenia and Spain to contrast and deliberate upon the insights derived from the literature review. Qualitative research methods were employed to engage in a nuanced exploration of the gathered data. Results: This empirical analysis deduced guidelines aimed at enhancing awareness and ameliorating some of these challenges. Discussion and Conclusion: We conclude that making visible the awareness that adults already have about numeracy in aspects of their lives, such as finance, health, or the use and critical interpretation of data, can give policymakers and curriculum developers clues to design effective numeracy programs to address the multifaceted challenges confronting contemporary society, both in the immediate and foreseeable future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From an understanding of knowledge mobilisation as a set of strategies that favour responsible and inclusive research, the aim of this paper is to identify the obstacles or barriers to carrying out such research in higher education institutions, as perceived by researchers. In this descriptive study, content analysis is used to examine semi-structured interviews carried out with eighty research groups from five European countries (Austria, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia and Spain) that participated in the research. Results reveal the main barriers researchers perceived are associated with social commitment, relational aspects, encouragement to participate (attitudinal, organisational and institutional barriers) and knowledge mobilisation practices (derived from the research process and research evaluation policies). Ethical and policy implications for more responsible and inclusive research are drawn in the conclusions.

This paper explores linguistic landscapes and the enactment of public visibility and presence of non-majority linguistic groups in EU member states. Non-majority linguistic groups gain power, visibility and presence through the introduction of bilingual or multilingual signposts on roads, streets, squares, and public buildings in towns and cities where a given linguistic group represents a significant population share. The article offers a comparative analysis of language policies of EU member states regarding enactment of official bilingual or multilingual signs in public space. Twenty EU member states have signed the "European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages," while 17 members have ratified it. In addition, the Charter of Fundamental Rights, an integral party of the Lisbon Treaty, stipulates that language diversity is one of the fundamental values respected by the EU. Hence, this comparative research assesses various practices employed by member states in relation to the proclaimed values of multilingualism. Consequently, the paper depicts and compares different language policies that produce linguistic landscapes in EU member states. Finally, it tries to determine whether there is a convergence towards a common EU policy on bilingual and multilingual signs in public space.

'Energy efficiency first' is one of the key principles of the Energy Union, mainly due to it being the most cost effective way to reduce emissions, improving energy security, enhancing competitiveness and making energy consumption more affordable for all consumers. In light of the revised EU Energy Efficiency Directive, this paper discusses new developments brought by the EU together with the national case studies of Slovenia and Spain. Given that the paper has a specific focus on the industrial sector, it discusses the selected measures of the Energy Efficiency Directive, such as defined in Articles 7, 8, and 14, which are the most relevant to this sector. The paper also explores the newly issued integrated national energy and climate plans together with national measures and policies that support energy efficiency in industry, including the quantification of achieved and forecast energy savings in these two EU Member States. • The revised EU Energy Efficiency Directive is the key driver of change in Member States. • More ambitious energy efficiency targets are projected in Slovenia and Spain for 2030. • The integrated National Energy and Climate plans inspired further national developments. • Both countries committed to continue their national measures/schemes on energy efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Backgroung/Objectives:Compares the nutritional quality of pre-packaged foods carrying health-related claims with foods that do not carry health-related claims.Subject/methods: Cross-sectional survey of pre-packaged foods available in Germany, The Netherlands, Spain, Slovenia and the United Kingdom in 2013. A total of 2034 foods were randomly sampled from three food store types (a supermarket, a neighbourhood store and a discounter). Nutritional information was taken from nutrient declarations present on food labels and assessed through a comparison of mean levels, regression analyses and the application of a nutrient profile model currently used to regulate health claims in Australia and New Zealand (Food Standards Australia New Zealand's Nutrient Profiling Scoring Criterion, FSANZ NPSC).Results: Foods carrying health claims had, on average, lower levels, per 100 g, of the following nutrients, energy-29.3 kcal (P<0.05), protein-1.2 g (P<0.01), total sugars-3.1 g (P<0.05), saturated fat-2.4 g (P<0.001), and sodium-842 mg (P<0.001), and higher levels of fibre-0.8 g (P<0.001). A similar pattern was observed for foods carrying nutrition claims. Forty-three percent (confidence interval (CI) 41%, 45%) of foods passed the FSANZ NPSC, with foods carrying health claims more likely to pass (70%, CI 64%, 76%) than foods carrying nutrition claims (61%, CI 57%, 66%) or foods that did not carry either type of claim (36%, CI 34%, 38%).Conclusions: Foods carrying health-related claims have marginally better nutrition profiles than those that do not carry claims; these differences would be increased if the FSANZ NPSC was used to regulate health-related claims. It is unclear whether these relatively small differences have significant impacts on health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the enactment of the EU Habitats Directive, the conservation status of forest habitat types, habitats of species, and species has become the central concept of the Directive's nature conservation legislation. Despite its role, it has drawn relatively little attention. Within a rather short research period, a few research papers have addressed the existing definitions, indicators for the conservation status assessment, and assessment techniques. This paper attempted to complete the set of measurable indicators available in national forest inventories and connect them with the forest habitat types' conservation status components (area, function, structure, and prospects). A set of 40 indicators was defined, labelled with one or more of the four conservation status components and assessed with the quality dimensions. The analysis uncovered that five indicators could be used to assess the component of range and area, 20 that of structure, 22 that of function and 27 that of prospects. It also showed that conventional forestry indicators such as tree species, diameter at breast height, and regeneration are less sensitive regarding the data quality. Conversely, some typical biodiversity indicators lacked completeness, timeliness, and precision. In addition to this analysis, the data distributions (data for them were provided by the national forest inventories of Italy, Slovenia, and Spain) of some indicators were analysed. Based on all the results, it was also possible to conclude that there is a shortage of national forest inventory indicators for the assessments of the area and function conservation status components. While the area component should be described with the indicators of forest habitat type fragmentation, mingling and perforation with non-forest and other forest vegetation communities, the functional component is bereft of indicators describing processes such as biomass growth and carbon cycling. Future research should thus search for more indicators to represent all conservation status components in a more balanced way. More efforts should also be expended into the harmonisation of indicators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper aimed to examine moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) levels in physical education. Method: A review of reviews was conducted in accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines. The screening process, data extraction, assessment of the risk of bias, and analysis of the results were carried out independently by two reviewers. A total of eight systematic reviews from six databases, which included 224 studies, involving more than 80,000 students (elementary, middle, and high school), enrolled in more than 450 schools worldwide were unpacked. Results: Students fail to meet the 50% recommendation of MVPA lesson time, irrespective of country, school stage, gender, or MVPA measures. Physical education-based interventions increased students' MVPA during lessons (range 14.3%-24%) compared with control groups. Conclusion: Physical education is uniquely positioned to provide physical activity opportunities for students, but teachers must target the provision of adequate MVPA levels, which is not currently happening.

Background and purpose: Social engagement is an important active aging strategy to promote older adults' mental health. The purposes of this study were to compare social engagement in older populations around the world and explore associations with mental health outcomes. Materials and methods: An international cross‐sectional survey was conducted from 2017 to 2019. Data were retrieved from The International Social Survey Programme for a secondary data analysis across 30 countries. This study applied the Taxonomy of Social Activities and its six levels as operational definitions for a consistent concept of social engagement for international comparisons. Results: In total, 9403 older adults with a mean age of 72.85 ± 6.40 years responded. The highest levels of older adults' social engagement were found in Switzerland, Thailand, and New Zealand. Older adults of a higher age, with a lower educational level, who were permanently sick or disabled, who had no partner, who were widowed or whose civil partner had died, who lived alone, and who had lower self‐placement in society had significantly lower social engagement than did their counterparts. In the regression model, older adults' social engagement positively predicted general health, self‐accomplishment, and life satisfaction, but negatively predicted loneliness and depression. Conclusions: In aging societies worldwide, encouraging older adults' social engagement would be beneficial to promote mental health. Implications for nursing practice and health policies: Community professional nurses can develop strategies of social engagement based on the needs and sociodemographic factors of older adults to improve their mental health. Developing efficient strategies and local policies by learning from successful experiences in other countries is important to promote social engagement in aging societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work aims to examine how the learning of mathematics in early childhood is developed in different policies, particularly within the processes of formal education and care in early years institutions. A comparative analysis of early mathematics education policies across countries must consider cultural differences, teaching practice, structural differences and institutional framework conditions, as well as the initial training and professional knowledge of teachers and educators. Extracted from the official country regulations, the following pages include some of the main characteristics of the national systems of early childhood education and care (ECEC) in Portugal, Slovenia and Spain, as well as a comparison of the ECEC guidelines concerning mathematics education between these three countries. There is an international consensus on an approach to early mathematics education inspired by realistic mathematics education (RME), i.e., on the importance of working mathematically in context, as well as on the idea of doing so through play, developing the language to communicate mathematical ideas. However, we found that these three aspects are reflected very differently in the official regulations of the three countries: while in Spain the development is very detailed and emphasizes the holistic approach and the role of mathematics in exploring the environment, the Portuguese curriculum emphasizes the role of mathematics as a form of language. The Slovenian curriculum, at last, focuses on the concepts and procedures associated with each mathematical sense. Furthermore, there are structural features concerning the regulation and type of ECEC system that have an influence in the implementation of the curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The first objective of this paper is to map the adoption of technologies for the reduction of energy and resource consumption in production and the second is to test the relationship between the implementation of those technologies and the performance of manufacturing firms. The aim is to contribute to the identification of the characteristics of the manufacturing firms that use this kind of innovative technology in order to help policy makers promote energy and resource efficiency in a suitable manner. Our research is based on the Spanish and Slovenian subsamples of a wider European Manufacturing Survey. Our suggested models explain how significant energy efficiency is, and how much of the variability in economic performance and environmental performance it can explain. The results show that the use of energy and material saving technologies does not have a clear and significant relationship with economic performance. On the other hand a significant positive relationship is found between energy and material saving technologies and environmental performance. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Education is the core of the factors that improved people for a better lifestyle and increases the level of society' development. Quality education is one of the most vital goals of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) due to actualizing these factors. Using relational network data envelopment analysis (DEA), which have three interrelated substages, this current paper computes the educational economy efficiency of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries bearing in mind the characteristics related to SDGs. The contribution of our study is the use of a novel approach to computing the educational economy efficiency using relational network DEA with GAMS. Even though some interesting differences reveal in the efficiency of the countries, the findings show that countries with high-efficiency scores are clustered around countries like Latvia, Slovenia, and Korea.

This paper presents qualitative research examining to what extent sojourns abroad engage their participants in intercultural interactions and whether or not such experience translates into students' intercultural growth. The results of the study demonstrated that studying abroad did not provide students with ample opportunities to immerse into the local community and fully discover a new cultural environment. However, students surrounded by local and their fellow international students met foreign cultures, which motivated them to explore and interpret the encountered diversity, and thus equipped them with knowledge about foreign cultures, sensitizing them to cultural diversity. Sometimes such contacts challenged students' preconceived judgments and stereotypes of specific cultural groups, their ways of thinking, valuing and acting, and resulted, to a lesser or greater extent, in rethinking these, leading to changing attitudes and values. International experiences also stimulated students to self-analyze their own cultural identity, and thereby contributed to their growth in self-awareness in this respect. By offering opportunities for experiencing cultural differences and prompting students to develop coping strategies and to make references to the home culture, the sojourn is thus of significant importance for tertiary students, allowing for fostering their intercultural development to a certain degree.