Health Sciences

Established in 2000, Millennium Development Goal 4 (MDG4) catalysed extraordinary political, financial, and social commitments to reduce under-5 mortality by two-thirds between 1990 and 2015. At the country level, the pace of progress in improving child survival has varied markedly, highlighting a crucial need to further examine potential drivers of accelerated or slowed decreases in child mortality. The Global Burden of Disease 2015 Study (GBD 2015) provides an analytical framework to comprehensively assess these trends for under-5 mortality, age-specific and cause-specific mortality among children under 5 years, and stillbirths by geography over time. Drawing from analytical approaches developed and refined in previous iterations of the GBD study, we generated updated estimates of child mortality by age group (neonatal, post-neonatal, ages 1-4 years, and under 5) for 195 countries and territories and selected subnational geographies, from 1980-2015. We also estimated numbers and r...

Before, everything happened in the doctor’s office. Now, what happens outside is also important because online technologies mean that patients can participate actively in their treatment, be well-informed, and take responsibility for their illness.
With the arrival of the internet and online services created especially for them, empowered patients (or as we call them in People Who, e patients) started becoming a reality which is changing the way in which we understand and manage health. To better understand and help them to self-manage their illness, we have created the e-patient observatory. Illness has two distinct and complementary aspects, medical and psychosocial, and in People Who we believe that the time has come to pay attention to both of these as part of an integrated and multidisciplinary approach.
People Who is a digital platform and app created to help patients manage their illness on a day-to-day basis, when they are not in the doctor’s office. That is why we wanted to move forward in this second annual report with an analysis and classification of illnesses from the patient’s social perspective, using qualitative semantic research of the activity on our platform. We have validated and studied in depth from this social perspective the 5 types of illness that we had identified in the 2015 report: Socially-stigmatized, Incapacitating, Suspected, Underestimated and Age-related illnesses.
It is true to say that illness accompanies us in everyday life, inasmuch as 99% of the time is spent outside the
The doctor’s office. This report tries to more fully understand patients’ everyday reality, with their family, at work, in their social life and on the personal and emotional plane. We believe that knowing about their concerns, problems, motivations and attitudes is essential if patient empowerment is to continue growing. We know that this empowerment is necessary in order to build a sustainable health system and to improve the society in which we live.
We hope that this report is useful and can be used by all healthcare agents, providers, payers, pharmaceutical companies and self-management programs, so that we can contribute to improving patients’ quality of life.

Background: Low back pain (LBP) is a common cause of disability and is ranked as the most burdensome health condition globally. Self-management, including components on increased knowledge, monitoring of symptoms, and physical activity, are consistently recommended in clinical guidelines as cost-effective strategies for LBP management and there is increasing interest in the potential role of digital health.