Giuseppina Cersosimo

7 Childhood and Juvenile Obesity in Italy: Health Promotion in an Era of Austerity

Over the last decade, Italy has witnessed a significant increase in the prevalence of childhood and juvenile obesity. The prevalence of childhood and juvenile obesity, common to most Western and European countries, produces important effects in the lives of today’s younger generations and can engender, in a medium- to long-term perspective, serious consequences for the physical health and well-being of future generations. Since 2008, the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) has accentuated an already existing process, by contributing to a decline in food quality, a deterioration in eating habits and an evident decrease in investments in healthcare. In Italy, these developments bring new and unfamiliar challenges for health promotion.

L’immaginazione urbana di Anselm Strauss

After nearly fifty years from its first publication, this paper proposes an analysis of the author Anselm Strauss, known for his Grounded Theory, but whose work as an urban sociologist remains mostly unknown. His urban remarks outline urban imagery, a recurrent symbolization produced by individuals in their interaction with urban spaces during everyday life.

La città ambivalente: lavoro e salute a Taranto

This essay highlights the ambivalence of a context such as that of the city of Taranto: Ilva factory, source of income and likely increase economic welfare, it gives rise, at the same time, to an inevitable process of deterioration of health, a controversial desire to work and an obsessing anxiety of degradation of health.

Salute e disuguaglianze. Percorsi analitici

The essay mainly analyses the issue of inequalities and differences in health. At present, vulnerable and socially disadvantaged people throughout the world have lower access to healthcare, get sick more often and die earlier than those with a privileged social position. Despite general developments of global wealth and technological progress, inequalities have never grown so exponentially. Increasingly critical are the roles of social capital as well as that of the World Health Organization and of its policy, whose effects can, in the course of the time, reduce health inequalities and re-establish a principle of ethical and distributive justice.

L'etica in sanità : empowerment, partecipazione e informazione dei cittadini : quali sviluppi?

Ethics in Health Care: Citizens’ Empowerment, Participation and Information. Roads to development? - The article underlines how techniques, rules, rights and ethics constitute, or could, a set of requirements and conditions needed to give shape to a legitimate clinical experimentation on human beings and, in particular, on subjects considered vulnerable. The article focuses on the relation between doctors, researchers, bio-ethic experts, lawyers, pharmaceutical promoters and citizens. It presents the heterogeneous knowledge and interests in ethical issues regarding health care, with overlapping of equity and equality in terms of access to clinical experimentation, as well as citizens’ difficulty in comprehending clinical experimentation and its effects. Finally, the study conducted with the focus group technique leads to a model that allows citizens and non-specialists to talk about participation and responsibility regarding clinical experimentation.

Innovazione ed efficacia: il coinvolgimento del sociologo in una Divisione di Medicina Interna

Innovazione ed efficacia: il coinvolgimento del sociologo in una Divisione di Medicina Interna - Sociologists’ work in hospitals has some deep historical roots, as it is shown by the studies of Goffman, Garfinkel or Strauss. This article points out that the involvement and the capability of health sociologists may result in good ouputs in a division of internal medicine. The sociologist in health setting is needed for civic empowerment, proposals and promotion. Moreover, the medical sociologist creates connections between different resources for individual or collective projects, as also for preventive or innovative undertakings. Keywords: innovation, effectivness, sociologist of health, empowerment, prevention, hospital. Parole chiave: innovazione, efficacia, sociologo della salute, responsabilita, prevenzione, ospedale.

Sviluppi sostenibili. Valorizzazione delle risorse territoriali nel Mediterraneo

The valorisation of territorial resources in the Mediterranean: areas and perspectives of development - Tourism is a key concept for many people when they think about Mediterranean localities and their development; however, the valorisation process of such areas is complex and not straightforward at all. This article illustrates a project of sustainable development and rehabilitation of territorial resources by exploring issues such as the role of memory in society, the function of oblivion and remembrance in innovation, and the issue and the importance of social networks; all of them are vital factors in the valorisation of the very often neglected or undervalued resources of the Mediterranean localities.

Donne, alcol, riabilitazione: la rilevanza delle reti sociali

Women, alcohol, rehabilitation: the importance of the social networks This article introduces the results of a survey conducted in Irpinia, focusing on the importance of both functional and dysfunctional aspects of social networks. Among other results, interviews highlighted the fact that the number of relationships established by women may in some cases guarantee rehabilitation and re-socialization to «normality» of everyday life. On the contrary, in other cases social networks are expression of a contradictory and ambivalent dimension, needed but at the same time objectively «oppressive» and consequently both loved and hated.

Telemedicina e innovazioni negli interventi per la salute

Cersosimo analizes telemedicine’s developement and its consequences in medical practice along three dimensions: patient/physician relationship; human body representations and perceptions of illness. Telemedicine (and its computerization) is considered the answer to the crisis of traditional medicine even if such a new order has to face and to contrast the digital divide.