The economic benefits of increasing breastfeeding rates in Spain

Abstract Background: Interventions aimed at promoting breastfeeding rates are among the most effective possible health policies available, with an estimated return of US$35 per dollar invested. Indeed, some authors found that a 10% increase in exclusive breastfeeding rates in the first two years of life led to a reduction in treatment costs of US$312 million…

On the long-run association between personality traits and road crashes: Findings from the British cohort study

Traffic crashes are the leading cause of death for those aged 15–29 years and the ninth cause of death worldwide. Personality traits play an important role in explaining traffic crashes. We use data from the British Cohort Study 1970 to analyse the effect of the respondent’s personality traits at age 10 on the probability of…

An empirical characterization of high-risk drivers in Spain. The role of gender, age, marital status and education

Traffic accidents are both a major economic and public health problem worldwide. We use data from the May 2016 Spanish barometer (n = 1632) to analyse the characteristics of drivers who declare different types of risky driving behaviours. Our estimates suggest that the likelihood of being a high-risk driver in Spain increases with educational attainment…

Estimating the impact of the Penalty Point System on road fatalities in Spain

Traffic accidents are a major public health concern since they are the leading cause of death for those aged 15–29 years and the ninth cause of death worldwide. In this paper, we estimate the overall effect on traffic fatalities of the introduction of the Penalty Point System (PPS) in Spain in 2006, jointly with those…

Impacto de la Ley de Dependencia sobre el gasto autonómico en servicios sociales

Objetivo: En este trabajo se cuestiona si el desarrollo del Sistema de Autonomía y Atención a la Dependencia (SAAD) contribuyó a incrementar el volumen de recursos del sistema público de servicios sociales (efecto desplazamiento) o, por el contrario, si dicho desarrollo se produjo a costa del resto de prestaciones de servicios sociales (efecto sustitución). Método:…

A nonlinear time-series analysis approach to identify thresholds in associations between population antibiotic use and rates of resistance

Balancing access to antibiotics with the control of antibiotic resistance is a global public health priority. At present, antibiotic stewardship is informed by a ‘use it and lose it’ principle, in which antibiotic use by the population is linearly related to resistance rates. However, theoretical and mathematical models suggest that use–resistance relationships are nonlinear. One…

Converting Parkinson-Specific Scores into Health State Utilities to Assess Cost-Utility Analysis

Objectives. The aim of this study was to compare the Parkinson’s Disease Questionnaire-8 (PDQ-8) with three multi-attribute utility (MAU) instruments (EQ-5D-3L, EQ-5D-5L, and 15D) and to develop mapping algorithms that could be used to transform PDQ-8 scores into MAU scores. Methods. A cross-sectional study was conducted. A final sample of 228 evaluable patients was included…

Reducing preference reversals: The role of preference imprecision and nontransparent methods

Preferences elicited with matching and choice usually diverge (as characterised by preference reversals), violating a basic rationality requirement, namely, procedure invariance. We report the results of an experiment that shows that preference reversals between matching (Standard Gamble in our case) and choice are reduced when the matching task is conducted using nontransparent methods. Our results…

Improving scope sensitivity in contingent valuation: Joint and separate evaluation of health states

We present data of a contingent valuation survey, testing the effect of evaluation mode on the monetary valuation of preventing road accidents. Half of the interviewees was asked to state their willingness to pay (WTP) to reduce the risk of having only 1 type of injury (separate evaluation, SE), and the other half of the…

Risk-taking attitudes of people who seek health care: an exploratory approach through lottery games using generalized estimating equations

Fundamento: La caracterización de la actitud ante el riesgo puede ser útil en la planificación de las intervenciones sanitarias. El objetivo fue estudiar la actitud ante el riesgo de una población que demanda cuidados de salud y evaluar la capacidad de un juego de loterías para evidenciar dicha actitud. Métodos: Estudio multicéntrico transversal. Se recogieron…