Conference Agenda

This study investigates the determinants of healthcare access in Italy, focusing on chronic patients and considering a range of factors at the individual and family levels. Italy's National Healthcare System, while offering universal coverage, faces regional disparities in healthcare quality and access. Using data from the ISTAT Aspects of Daily Life Survey (2014-2021), the research examines the influence of demographic, health, behavioral, and social factors on the utilization of inpatient care, emergency care, and out-of-hours services. Preliminary findings reveal that age, gender, and social support play key roles in healthcare access, particularly among individuals over 60. Women in this age group, for example, tend to underutilize services compared to men, while physical activity and BMI show mixed relationships with healthcare usage. Higher educational levels correlate with less frequent healthcare use, possibly due to better self-health management. The social support index indicates that stronger family ties can lead to increased healthcare utilization for older adults. Overall, the study highlights the need for tailored policies addressing the diverse factors affecting healthcare access for chronic patients, aiming to ensure equitable care for all citizens.

While there is extensive research on lifestyle factors related to physical well-being, the link between intellectual and cultural activities (e.g., reading, writing, participation in cultural events) and psychological well-being has received less attention. The aim of this work is to explore the association between cultural consumption and individuals’ health perception in Italy, seeking to determine a directionality in this association. The proposed methodological solution is to use of repeated cross-sectional surveys – the annual Aspects of Daily Life (ADL) survey carried out by the Italian Institute of Statistics – employing a pseudo-panel approach.

Pseudo-panels work with “entities,” representing common blocks of individuals rather than singular individuals, and are treated as if they were composed of the same individuals across time. Specifically, for this study individuals aged 35-69 in 2005 are examined regarding their cultural consumption – accounting for various aspects – followed by an assessment of their health outcome 14 years later, in 2019, when they are aged 49-83.

Preliminary results support the hypothesis that cultural consumption is good for health, suggesting a relationship that goes beyond mere association, providing insights into the potential long-term impact of cultural engagement on well-being, and suggesting new opportunities for cultural policies to enhance public health.

We suggest a novel approach for long-term forecasting of long-term care insurance expenses that allows to include demographic and epidemiological trends and different care definitions in the model. Our approach manages high dimensionalities and correlations in the data via principal component analysis, which allows to include both common and opposing trends in care rates over demographic and epidemiological dimensions. Moreover, the model allows the inclusion of future uncertainty in forecasts based on various approaches, either deterministic scenario analyses, stochastic Monte Carlo simulations or mixed forms, such as randomizations from ensemble models. Moreover, our model suggests the use of multivariate generalized linear models, in our case a Dirichlet multinomial model that estimates the differences in the demand for specific care services based on the patients’ demographic and epidemiological characteristics. We present an updated projection of the long-term care insurance expenses for Germany, that has not been done in that degree of detail and based on these data for Germany, yet. Therefore, our paper offers valuable aspects for both scientists interested in the improvement of forecast models for social and especially long-term care insurance and planners interested in the fiscal outlook for Germany.

Occupational stress is presently considered a prominent societal issue as well as a growing problem of public health for both employees and self-employed people. Using data from the 2022 European OSH Pulse survey, commissioned by the European Union information agency for occupational safety and health (EU-OSHA), we implement the class of CUB models to study the response patterns towards work-related stress, in a post-pandemic scenario. Our findings show that, across the 27 EU member states, the COVID-19 epidemic has exerted a more significant impact on the self-employed respondents as compared to that of the employees.

This study investigates attitudes toward preventive health behaviors among adults across six European countries: Germany, Spain, France, Hungary, Italy and the UK. Conducted between March and July 2024, our survey, based on the COM-B model, explored behaviors related to mask-wearing, self-isolation, and willingness to vaccinate against COVID-19 in post-pandemic times. Results indicate that while mask-wearing in epidemic situations is generally high, younger populations exhibit lower protective behaviors. Notably, a concerning trend of reluctance to wear masks when symptomatic emerged, particularly in Germany and the UK. Additionally, we observed a significant decline in vaccination willingness over time, with France and Hungary showing consistently low levels. Our findings highlight important age and gender differences in health behaviors, underscoring the need for targeted public health strategies that foster collective responsibility and address specific cultural contexts. Continuous monitoring of health behaviors is essential to improve population health outcomes effectively.