The Use of ICD-9-CM Coding to Identify COVID-19 Diagnoses and Determine Risk Factors for 30-Day Death Rate in Hospitalized Patients in Italy: Retrospective Study.

Background: In Italy, it has been difficult to accurately quantify hospital admissions of patients with a COVID-19 diagnosis using the Hospital Information System (HIS), mainly due to the heterogeneity of codes used in the hospital discharge records during different waves of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Objective: The objective of this study was to define a specific combination of codes to identify the COVID-19 hospitalizations within the HIS and to investigate the risk factors associated with mortality due to COVID-19 among patients admitted to Italian hospitals in 2020.

Methods: A retrospective study was conducted using the hospital discharge records, provided by more than 1300 public and private Italian hospitals.

[Continuing medical education (Cme/Ecm) on medical devices in Italy: a review for the 2019-2021 period.].

Introduction: Health technology assessment (Hta) is a multidisciplinary process that uses explicit methods to determine the value of a health technology across various domains. It aims at supporting decision-makers in promoting an equitable, efficient, and high-quality healthcare system. During 2023, the Italian Minister of Health officially endorsed the National program for Hta on medical devices 2023-2025 (Pnhta), aligning with EU Regulation 2017/745 and EU Regulation 2017/746.

COVID-19 Contact Tracing Strategies During the First Wave of the Pandemic: Systematic Review of Published Studies.

Background: Contact tracing (CT) represented one of the core activities for the prevention and control of COVID-19 in the early phase of the pandemic. Several guidance documents were developed by international public health agencies and national authorities on the organization of COVID-19 CT activities. While most research on CT focused on the use digital tools or relied on modelling techniques to estimate the efficacy of interventions, poor evidence is available on the real-world implementation of CT strategies and on the organizational models adopted during the initial phase of the emergency to set up CT activities.

Health assessment for migrants and asylum seekers upon arrival and while hosted in reception centres: Italian guidelines.

Background: During 2016-17, national guidelines were developed in order to provide evidence-based recommendations on health assessments for migrants and asylum seekers upon their arrival in Italy.

Methods: Scientific literature published between 2005 and 2016 was searched in different databases. A free search was also performed on international organizations' websites in order to identify additional relevant documents.

[Global health and proximity: a framework for strategies of access to healthcare by hard-to-reach groups.].

The debate on strategies for protecting migrant health has taken shape in recent years around the crucial issue of accessibility. The epistemological framework for this question is found in the systemic vision of global health, in which proximity emerges as an ethical-practical dimension that must inform public health programs. From an operational perspective, starting from experience gained and the literature, some strategies have emerged, centred on networks, which we propose to define in terms of "proximity public health" (PPH).

[Undocumented immigrants: what do we know about their health?].

In Italy, immigrants represent a "fuzzy" set, to which it is difficult to apply dichotomous categories as a classification (i.e., regular/irregular, economic/forced, etcetera).