Access to health care for patients with thalassaemia in Greece: a cross-sectional study.

Background: The prevalence and clinical burden of beta-thalassaemia in Greece is high. Little information is available on the unmet needs of patients with beta-thalassaemia and barriers to access to care.

Aims: This study investigated barriers that patients with transfusion-dependent beta-thalassaemia in Greece face when accessing care and the associations between socioeconomic factors and access to care.

Cancer patients' organisation participation in heath policy decision-making: a snapshot/cluster analysis of the EU-28 countries.

Objectives: Even though patient involvement in health policy decision-making is well documented, studies evaluating the degree and impact of this participation are scarce. This is even more conspicuous in the case of cancer. There is evidence showing that patients with the same type of cancer and at the same stage of the disease will receive different treatments in different countries.

Assessing Patient Organization Participation in Health Policy: A Comparative Study in France and Italy.

Background: Even though there are many patient organizations across Europe, their role in impacting health policy decisions and reforms has not been well documented. In line with this, the present study endeavours to fill this gap in the international literature. To this end, it aims to validate further a previously developed instrument (the Health Democracy Index - HDI) measuring patient organization participation in health policy decision-making.

For the Many, Not the Few: Patient Empowerment.

Today's patients are more knowledgable than ever before and should be placed at the centre of their own healthcare decisions. Empowering the patient is, and always will be, a fundamental pillar of personalised medicine. Front-line healthcare professionals cannot treat a patient properly without taking into account his or her perceptions of value.

Health democracy in Europe: Cancer patient organization participation in health policy.

Background: Patient organization participation in health policy decision making is an understudied area of inquiry. A handful of qualitative studies have suggested that the growing number of patient organizations in Europe and their increasing involvement in policy issues do not result in high political effectiveness. However, existing research is largely country-specific.