Patrizia Giannantoni

Developmental evaluation at age 4: Validity of an Italian parental questionnaire

Aim:  To validate an Italian parental questionnaire designed to evaluate the neuropsychological and behavioural developmental status of 4‐year‐olds and identify children in need of further evaluation.

Disseminating good practices for patient safety: the experience of the Italian National Observatory

Background: The objective of this paper is to discuss how national collaborative programs based on the dissemination of good practices could effectively improve patient safety and be sustainable. The paper also aims at identifying some cross-system characteristics that would allow for a “safe practice programme” to run successfully. Methods: The quality and safety of the healthcare services provided by the Italian healthcare system to its citizens are very heterogeneous. Therefore, a public agency – by government mandate – instituted a national programme to improve patient safety. The model applied relies on a cyclic scheme for collecting, classifying and promoting the active dissemination of evidence-based safe practices throughout the network of healthcare providers. Results: The Italian programme has been reviewed by the OECD as a key action to improve patient safety as the results are very encouraging in terms of both effectiveness and sustainability. Conclusion: In this paper we use the experience of the Italian Observatory on Good Practices for Patient Safety to corroborate and enrich the literature about improvement programs based on good practices. If specific conditions of responsiveness and accountability are met at all levels, these programs can be successful and sustainable. Furthermore, such programs could be easily adapted to other health care systems.

Budget impact of pneumococcal vaccination in adults and elderly in Italy

BackgroundStreptococcus pneumoniae or pneumococcus, is responsible for severe invasive infections (IPD) in high risk groups and in the elderly. Moreover the pneumococcus is the most common cause of...

Similarity of Perceived Health Between Household Members: The “Mutual Influences” Hypothesis

Demographers and social epidemiologists have widely recognized that determinants of health operate on different levels. Among all of the relational networks, the family deserves a special place as it is the context where lifestyles and health-related behaviors are generally developed and shared. Using data from the Italian Health Interview Survey 2004/2005 for ages 18 and above, this chapter aims to provide an estimation of the magnitude of influence that the household has on self-perceived health, controlling for individual characteristics and the geographical context. We select three outcome variables to investigate perceived health: Physical Component Summary, Mental Component Summary, and poor Self-Rated Health. We develop an index of homogeneity within households and explore to what extent mutual influences of health perception exist within a household, resulting in a high resemblance of health for people living together, independent of or in addition to the effect of household covariates. Eventually, we try to gain a better understanding of the pathways through which these mutual influences are spread between people in the same household.

Predictive validity of the Italian parental questionnaire for developmental evaluation at age 4 (QS4-G).

To examine whether the results at 4 years of age of the developmental questionnaire QS4‐G can predict the outcome of cognitive, neuropsychological and academic abilities 4–6 years later. The QS4‐G is a validated parental questionnaire designed for the screening and surveillance of the neuropsychological and behavioural developmental status of 4‐year‐olds (93 questions).