RISULTATI RICERCA

Background: The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared that the COVID-19 pandemic has had a serious impact on the mental health and well-being of people worldwide. Method: The authors conducted an observational pilot study, considering two patient cohorts: the first sample of 20 non-COVID-19 patients admitted to the ICU from September 2019 to September 2020 and the second sample of 26 COVID-19 patients admitted to the ICU from October 2020 and April 2021. Participants were contacted for a telephone interview within six months after discharge. Results: The quality of life, calculated through the SF-12, of patients admitted for COVID- 19 in 2020-21 is worse than the sample discharged from the ICU in the previous period, 2019-2020. Conclusions: The quality of life indices that emerged in both the pandemic and prepandemic eras were lower than average, but when comparing the two cohorts, the indices collected in the pandemic era were lower.

The article investigates the relationship between spirituality and care by preliminarily reconstructing the genealogy of the health and salvation nexus, a link hitherto little explored by sociology. We intend to show that the union between spirituality and care has ancient roots and manifests itself in different expressions that need to be explored within the historical, discursive and practical frameworks that pertain to the link between health and salvation. These three dimensions of analysis (history, discourses and practices) favor the sociological understanding of the nexus between spirituality and care, that is, the symbiotic relationship between care for the body and care for the spirit at the basis of the current interest in spirituality within medical and nursing practices. We suggest that to fully understand the current importance of spirituality in the field of health, it is essential to overcome the ahistorical and essentializing conceptualization dominant in the medical-nursing literature.

This study aims to investigate health inequalities in the city of Milan, making use of two complementary theoretical frameworks, namely the fundamental causes theory and the intersectionality theory. Relying on administrative healthcare data, we examined the social gradient in relation to several health outcomes, comparing the results from the traditional “additive” approach with those from the “multiplicative” approach. We examined the association between socioeconomic status, gender, and citizenship on one side, and health outcomes on the other. The results confirm the presence of a social gradient in health conditions, highlighting distinct health risks according to each pathology and to the combinations between the three socio-demographic indicators. The analysis carried out confirms the methodological usefulness of the joint application of the two theoretical frameworks, providing relevant clues regarding the development of interventions aimed at promoting public health. Keywords: health inequalities; social determinants of health; intersectionality theory; fundamental causes theory; social gradient; social epidemiology.

This article presents the analysis of audio-recorded and transcribed medical encounters between andrologists and native and migrant patients with erectile dysfunctions. The article deals with reflexive expectations as basic structures of the medical system, showing that andrologists’ actions contribute to undermine stable reflexive expectations in medical communication. The analysis shows that deficit in treatment of language barriers is only one single indicator of the more general problem of failure in structuring expectations concerning negotiation of information and patients’ contributions. This failure prevents a patient-centred form of communication processes that involves migrant patients.

The contribution discusses the results of a research project aimed at evaluating the specialized support actions for the qualified taking into account of citizens who are recipients of the regional measure against poverty Re.D 3.0, II edition (ex L.R. 3/2016) carried out in the Municipality of Modugno (BA) between April and July 2023. The following were involved: five out of eighteen beneficiaries of the measure, through in-depth interviews; seventeen between referents of municipal offices, third sector entities and for-profit companies engaged in the implementation of the individualized project, skills assessment, activation and realization of work internships through three focus groups. After reconstructing the main features of the measure, the discussion will delve into the theme of conditionalities for employment activation as a lever for empowerment realization; the skills assessment as a tool for measuring empowerment; the value of the measure declared by the beneficiaries as a sign of empowerment from their perspective. Finally, we will question the need to agree on the meanings of empowerment among the various perspectives of the involved actors as a prerequisite for its evaluation.1