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Biomedical subjects

D McDaid

Publications and source records attributed to D McDaid.

9 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2005

Promoting mental well-being in the workplace: a European policy perspective.

The nature of the workplace continues to change as Europe adapts to the challenges of competing in a global marketplace. Across the European Union there is a trend of increasing absenteeism and early retirement due to mental health problems, particularly stress and depression. The social and economic costs of lost productivity in Europe are substantial. Moreover, the sustainability of social protection systems may be challenged further by increases in the levels of disability benefits paid to people who have left work on grounds of poor mental health. Yet despite these significant consequences, at both national and pan-European levels, decision-makers have been slow to recognise the importance of promoting mental health within the workplace, although recently there have been some positive developments. This paper outlines some of the socio-economic arguments for the promotion of good mental well-being in the labour force and identifies how they link with different national and European policy agendas around four key issues: economic growth and development, the promotion of a high level of public health, sustainability of social welfare systems and social inclusion. The role and activities to promote mental well-being in the workplace undertaken by both national and international organizations in Europe are outlined along with important gaps and challenges that need to be addressed.

Absenteeism↗
PubMed2003

Financing health care in Europe: context for the Schizophrenia Outpatient Health Outcomes Study.

OBJECTIVE: Exploration of the implications for mental health care of the health care funding environment in Europe, as context for the Schizophrenia Outpatient Health Outcomes (SOHO) Study. METHOD: Data on health care financing for individual countries were sourced by review of the literature and personal communication with European country representatives. RESULTS: The main and complementary sources of health care finance are presented for the 10 European countries participating in the SOHO study. CONCLUSION: A mixture of tax and social insurance funding mechanisms dominate general health care funding in Europe. These mechanisms in principle promote equity in access to all health care interventions, including those for mental health. However, current resource allocation to mental health care may not reflect fully the impact of mental health disorders. Further work is now under way to examine the contribution of non-health sectors (such as social welfare) to the funding and provision of services.

Ambulatory Care↗
PubMed2001

Estimating the costs of informal care for people with Alzheimer's disease: methodological and practical challenges.

Although Alzheimer's disease and related disorders may have a heavy impact on informal caregivers, estimates of informal care costs have been neglected and when included in cost of illness studies, valuations have been highly variable. Although these variations are in part due to differences in samples and the difficulty in measuring caregiving time, this illustrates the need to standardise the methodology not only for valuing formal, but also informal care costs. Methods used for valuing informal care are identified, together with theoretical and practical challenges in measurement. In particular the measurement of time and it's associated satisfaction or utility is complex and valuations of time need to consider aspects of the caregiving experience which influence the marginal valuation of the time spent caring. More empirical work is required to elicit information on both the positive and negative satisfaction associated with caregiving and to incorporate this into valuations of the costs related to informal care.

Alzheimer Disease↗
PubMed2001

Developing a UK health equity network.

The UK Health Equity Network (HEN) was established in 1999 to encourage and facilitate multidisciplinary and multi-stakeholder collaboration in health inequalities research. This paper briefly details the history, objectives and location of HEN.

Cooperative Behavior↗
PubMed2001

Translating evidence into practice. The case of influenza vaccination.

A problem common to all health care systems remains the translation of robust evidence into effective practice. Influenza vaccination has been reported to be an effective public health care intervention, but guidelines on coverage and subsequent uptake rates for vaccination across European countries vary substantially. One challenge therefore is to evaluate how effective different implementation mechanisms may be in improving overall vaccination rates for target populations across Europe.

Delivery of Health Care↗
PubMed1993

Polymorphism in the promoter region of HLA-DRB genes.

Polymorphism is a hallmark of the molecules encoded within the MHC of humans and other mammals. Recently, evidence of polymorphism has also been shown to exist in the transcriptional regulatory regions of HLA-DQB genes. In this article, we report that polymorphism exists also in the promoter region of HLA-DRB genes. The sequence of the regulatory region of DRB genes from five homozygous DR B-cell lines, each of a distinct DR haplotype, revealed a number of differences, some of which are in the critical class II boxes that are generally conserved in class II promoters. The major differences occurred in a comparison of DR4 to the other DR haplotypes. These data suggest the existence of another important source of HLA class II polymorphism that may play a role in susceptibility to HLA-associated autoimmune disease.

Base Sequence↗