1,009 results match your criteria: "Universitat Oberta de Catalunya.[Affiliation]"

Purpose: To explore the experiences of individuals with fibromyalgia (FM) through written narratives (WN) and to preliminarily investigate the potential value of these narratives for healthcare professionals in assessing the overall perceived severity and disability experienced by individuals with FM.

Materials And Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted with 46 participants with a FM diagnosis. They were asked to complete a WN task that aimed to capture their personal experiences.

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Background: Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) has been found to be beneficial for individuals dealing with chronic pain. The theoretical mechanisms of change proposed by ACT are based on the Hexaflex model. To comprehensively reflect this model, the Multidimensional Psychological Flexibility Inventory (MPFI) and Psy-Flex have been developed.

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Background: The process of tailored implementation is ill-defined and under-explored. The ItFits-toolkit was developed and subsequently tested as a self-guided online platform to facilitate implementation of tailored strategies for internet-based cognitive behavioural therapy (iCBT) services. In ImpleMentAll, ItFits-toolkit had a small but positive effect on the primary outcome of iCBT normalisation.

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Community health action and COVID-19 in Barcelona neighbourhoods: responses and challenges.

Health Promot Int

August 2024

CIBER de Epidemiología y Salud Pública (CIBERESP), Avenida Montforte de Lemos, 3-5 (Pabellón 11, Planta 0), 28029 Madrid, Spain.

The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated pre-existing social, economic and political inequalities. The evidence describes the use of community engagement approaches to support appropriate COVID-19 prevention and control measures. We aimed to delve deeper into the community response to COVID-19 in Barcelona neighbourhoods with different pre-existing levels of development of community health action (CHA).

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Introduction: The use of emerging tobacco and nicotine products affects tobacco use behaviors among college students. Thus, we aimed to examine transitions in tobacco use patterns and identify their predictors among smokers in a cohort of nursing students in Catalonia (Spain).

Methods: We conducted a prospective longitudinal study of Catalan nursing students between 2015-2016 and 2018-2019.

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Knowledge sharing in virtual communities of practice of family caregivers of people with Alzheimer's.

BMC Geriatr

July 2024

Estudis de Psicologia i Ciències de l'Educació, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Rambla Poblenou, 156, Barcelona, 08018, Spain.

Introduction: Knowledge sharing can only happen in the context of a trusting and supportive environment, such as evolves in communities of practice and their virtual equivalent, virtual communities of practice. The main objective of this study was to understand knowledge sharing between participants in a virtual community of practice of caregivers of people with Alzheimer's.

Methods: The authors designed their own mobile application, and two virtual communities of practice were created independently and differentiated by how they were moderated: one by an expert caregiver and the other by three health professionals.

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Toward Sustainable Adoption of Integrated Care for Prevention of Unplanned Hospitalizations: A Qualitative Analysis.

Int J Integr Care

June 2024

Fundacióde Recerca Clínic Barcelona - Institut d'Investigacions Biomèdiques August Pi i Sunyer (FRCB-IDIBAPS), Barcelona, ES.

Introduction: Complex chronic patients are prone to unplanned hospitalizations leading to a high burden on healthcare systems. To date, interventions to prevent unplanned admissions show inconclusive results. We report a qualitative analysis performed into the EU initiative JADECARE (2020-2023) to design a digitally enabled integrated care program aiming at preventing unplanned hospitalizations.

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In this paper, we analyse the different advances in artificial intelligence (AI) approaches in multiple sclerosis (MS). AI applications in MS range across investigation of disease pathogenesis, diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis. A subset of AI, Machine learning (ML) models analyse various data sources, including magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), genetic, and clinical data, to distinguish MS from other conditions, predict disease progression, and personalize treatment strategies.

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Cellular senescence, a form of terminal cell cycle arrest, is as a key driver of organismal ageing and an important factor in age-related diseases. Insights into the senescent phenotype have led to the development of novel therapeutic strategies, collectively known as senotherapies, that aim to ameliorate the detrimental effects of senescent cell accumulation in tissues. The senotherapeutic field has rapidly evolved over the past decade, with clinical translation of the first drugs discovered currently underway.

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Objective: While social cognition is shown to be impaired in several mental disorders, the effects of cannabis on social cognition are still not clear. Past studies have used the multifaceted empathy test (MET) to study social cognition. This study aims to test the validity of the MET Spanish version and to evaluate the effects of cannabis use on social cognition.

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Background: Quantitative maps obtained with diffusion weighted (DW) imaging, such as fractional anisotropy (FA) -calculated by fitting the diffusion tensor (DT) model to the data,-are very useful to study neurological diseases. To fit this map accurately, acquisition times of the order of several minutes are needed because many noncollinear DW volumes must be acquired to reduce directional biases. Deep learning (DL) can be used to reduce acquisition times by reducing the number of DW volumes.

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Background: The aim of this study was to analyze the nutritional quality of mid-afternoon snacks for schooled children aged 3 to 12 years in three areas of Catalonia (Spain).

Methods: A descriptive observational study collected information on habits and the mid-afternoon snack of 782 schooled children aged 3 to 12 years in three cities, Barcelona, Girona, and Lleida, located in Catalonia (Spain). The children's families voluntarily agreed to complete an online questionnaire that collected information about demographic data and snacking habits in the afternoon, as well as a record of mid-afternoon snack intake over three school days.

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Background: Hospital services are typically reimbursed using case-mix tools that group patients according to diagnoses and procedures. We recently developed a case-mix tool (i.e.

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The prevalence of dermatological conditions in primary care, coupled with challenges such as dermatologist shortages and rising consultation costs, highlights the need for innovative solutions. Artificial intelligence (AI) holds promise for improving the diagnostic analysis of skin lesion images, potentially enhancing patient care in primary settings. This systematic review following PRISMA guidelines examined primary studies (2012-2022) assessing AI algorithms' diagnostic accuracy for skin diseases in primary care.

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Background: Comprehensive management of multimorbidity can significantly benefit from advanced health risk assessment tools that facilitate value-based interventions, allowing for the assessment and prediction of disease progression. Our study proposes a novel methodology, the Multimorbidity-Adjusted Disability Score (MADS), which integrates disease trajectory methodologies with advanced techniques for assessing interdependencies among concurrent diseases. This approach is designed to better assess the clinical burden of clusters of interrelated diseases and enhance our ability to anticipate disease progression, thereby potentially informing targeted preventive care interventions.

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This article focuses on the ways in which narrative accounts of loneliness in literature problematize current definitions of this important and yet underexplored determinant of health. I argue that the prevailing conceptualization of loneliness in health research, with a general emphasis on social prescribing, obscures other dimensions of loneliness beyond social connectedness that also need to be accounted for in its definition. Drawing on narrative approaches to health and care and taking as a case study Santiago Lorenzo's Spanish novel Los asquerosos (2018), the article gestures toward a more political-rather than exclusively subjective and relational-reading of loneliness.

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[Drowning mortality in Catalonia (2019-2022)].

Rev Esp Salud Publica

June 2024

Instituto de Medicina Legal y Ciencias Forenses de Cataluña; Departamento de Justicia, Derechos y Memoria de la Generalitat de Catalunya. Barcelona. España.

Objective: Data on drownings tend to underestimate mortality from this cause. The objective of this study was to describe fatal drownings recorded in Catalonia between 2019 and 2022 through forensic sources, present their characteristics, and assess the utility of this information for monitoring drowning mortality.

Methods: A retrospective observational study based on the register of judicial deaths from the Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences of Catalonia was carried out.

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Background: Chronic pain is prevalent in our society, with conditions such as fibromyalgia being notably widespread. The gold standard for aiding individuals dealing with chronic pain involves interdisciplinary approaches rooted in a biopsychosocial perspective. Regrettably, access to such care is difficult for most of the people in need.

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Structural dynamics of plant-pollinator mutualistic networks.

PNAS Nexus

June 2024

Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3), Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Rambla del Poblenou, 154 08018, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain.

The discourse surrounding the structural organization of mutualistic interactions mostly revolves around modularity and nestedness. The former is known to enhance the stability of communities, while the latter is related to their feasibility, albeit compromising the stability. However, it has recently been shown that the joint emergence of these structures poses challenges that can eventually lead to limitations in the dynamic properties of mutualistic communities.

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Introduction: Preventive care practices are a challenge in community care. This study examined hantavirus preventive practices and their relationship with personal and social factors, lifestyle, and cultural beliefs.

Method: An explanatory sequential mixed methods design, guided by Leininger's Theory of Culture Care Diversity and Universality, was used in two phases: (a) a cross-sectional relational design ( = 109) and (b) ethnonursing research ( = 30), in an endemic community in Panama.

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We aimed to compare the ability of diffusion tensor imaging and multi-compartment spherical mean technique to detect focal tissue damage and in distinguishing between different connectivity patterns associated with varying clinical outcomes in multiple sclerosis (MS). Seventy-six people diagnosed with MS were scanned using a SIEMENS Prisma Fit 3T magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), employing both conventional (T1w and fluid-attenuated inversion recovery) and advanced diffusion MRI sequences from which fractional anisotropy (FA) and microscopic FA (μFA) maps were generated. Using automated fiber quantification (AFQ), we assessed diffusion profiles across multiple white matter (WM) pathways to measure the sensitivity of anisotropy diffusion metrics in detecting localized tissue damage.

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Toward Adoption of Health Risk Assessment in Population-Based and Clinical Scenarios: Lessons From JADECARE.

Int J Integr Care

June 2024

Fundació de Recerca Clínic Barcelona -Institut d'Investigacions Biomèdiques August Pi i Sunyer (FRCB-IDIBAPS), Barcelona, Spain.

Introduction: Health risk assessment (HRA) strategies are cornerstone for health systems transformation toward value-based patient-centred care. However, steps for HRA adoption are undefined. This article analyses the process of transference of the Adjusted Morbidity Groups (AMG) algorithm from the Catalan Good Practice to the Marche region (IT) and to Viljandi Hospital (EE), within the JADECARE initiative (2020-2023).

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