Health care issues in Croatian elections 2005-2010: series of public opinion surveys.
Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT: Aim
To compare the results of a series of public opinion surveys on experiences with the health care sector in Croatia conducted in the time of elections and to analyze whether political party affiliation had any influence on issues of priority ranking.Methods
The surveys were conducted during 2005, 2007, and 2009. They were administered through a Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing method to representative samples of Croatian population and were statistically weighted according to sex, age, level of education, and political party affiliation. The random sampling of the person within the household was done using the table of random numbers.Result
Health and health care system was the most important issue (58%) during the 2007 parliamentary election and the second most important issue during the 2005 and 2009 elections (46% and 28%). In the 2007 election, health care was viewed as most important by women, respondents with lower education levels, and respondents with lower income. In 2005, the most important health care issues were corruption and lack of funding (45% and 43%, respectively), in 2007 poor organization and lack of funding (43% and 42%, respectively), and in 2009 lack of funding and corruption (51% and 45%, respectively).Conclusion
Health and health care system were consistently among the top two issues in all elections from 2005 to 2009. The top three most important health care sector issues were corruption, poor organization, and lack of funding. This indicates that political parties should include solutions to these issues in their health care policymaking.
SUBMITTER: Radin D
PROVIDER: S-EPMC3195967 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Similar Datasets
Project description:We present results of an abstract, agent based model of opinion dynamics simulations based on the emotion/information/opinion (E/I/O) approach, applied to a strongly polarized society, corresponding to the Polish political scene between 2005 and 2015. Under certain conditions the model leads to metastable coexistence of two subcommunities of comparable size (supporting the corresponding opinions)-which corresponds to the bipartisan split found in Poland. Spurred by the recent breakdown of this political duopoly, which occurred in 2015, we present a model extension that describes both the long term coexistence of the two opposing opinions and a rapid, transitory change due to the appearance of a third party alternative. We provide quantitative comparison of the model with the results of polls and elections in Poland, testing the assumptions related to the modeled processes and the parameters used in the simulations. It is shown, that when the propaganda messages of the two incumbent parties differ in emotional tone, the political status quo may be unstable. The asymmetry of the emotions within the support bases of the two parties allows one of them to be 'invaded' by a newcomer third party very quickly, while the second remains immune to such invasion.
| S-EPMC4865045 | biostudies-literature
Project description:In many Western societies there are rising concerns about increasing polarization in public debate. However, statistics on private attitudes paint a different picture: the average attitudes in societies are more moderate and remain rather stable over time. The present paper presents an agent-based model of how such discrepancies between public opinion and private attitudes develop at the scale of micro-societies. Based on social psychological theorizing, the model distinguishes between two types of agents: a) those seeking to gain or maintain a good reputation and status, and b) those seeking to promote group harmony by reaching consensus. We characterized these different types of agents by different decision rules for either voicing their opinion or remaining silent, based on the behavior of their proximal network. Results of the model simulations show that even when the private attitudes of the agents are held constant, publicly expressed opinions can oscillate and (depending on the reputational concerns of individual actors) situations can occur in which minorities as well as majorities are silenced. We conclude that the macro-level consequences of micro-level decisions to either voice an opinion or remain silent provide a foundation for better understanding how public opinions are shaped. Moreover, we discuss the conditions under which public opinion could be considered a good representation of private attitudes in a society.
| S-EPMC7688181 | biostudies-literature
Project description:We investigate the emergence of extreme opinion trends in society by employing statistical physics modeling and analysis on polls that inquire about a wide range of issues such as religion, economics, politics, abortion, extramarital sex, books, movies, and electoral vote. The surveys lay out a clear indicator of the rise of extreme views. The precursor is a nonlinear relation between the fraction of individuals holding a certain extreme view and the fraction of individuals that includes also moderates, e.g., in politics, those who are "very conservative" versus "moderate to very conservative" ones. We propose an activation model of opinion dynamics with interaction rules based on the existence of individual "stubbornness" that mimics empirical observations. According to our modeling, the onset of nonlinearity can be associated to an abrupt bootstrap-percolation transition with cascades of extreme views through society. Therefore, it represents an early-warning signal to forecast the transition from moderate to extreme views. Moreover, by means of a phase diagram we can classify societies according to the percolative regime they belong to, in terms of critical fractions of extremists and people's ties.
| S-EPMC4437297 | biostudies-other
Project description:Since 2013, Australian aid has been reduced and increasingly focused on delivering benefits to Australia. Motivated by these changes, this paper fills three gaps in the existing literature on public opinion about aid. It provides the only recent detailed study of Australians' opinions about aid. It studies specific policy questions in addition to the broader questions typical of international research. And it studies views on the purpose of aid, an area not previously researched. Although Australians are generally supportive of aid, most backed major aid cuts in 2015. However, most Australians think the purpose of Australian aid should be helping people in poor countries, not bringing benefits to Australia. There is a clear left-right divide in responses to all questions; however, some variables correlated with support for aid fail to explain variation in views about aid's purpose. The paper concludes by discussing ramifications for those who seek to change aid policy.
| S-EPMC6049982 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Although there has been much interest in British public opinion on Brexit, much less is known about how EU-27 Europeans view the Brexit negotiations. This is surprising, because Brexit confronts the EU-27 with difficult choices. Whereas accommodating the UK carries the risk of encouraging further countriesto leave the EU, an uncompromising negotiation stance increases the economic and social costs of Brexit. Using original survey data from 39,000 respondents in all EU-27 countries collected between the start of the Brexit negotiations and December 2018, this article shows that exposure to the economic risks of Brexit makes respondents more willing to accommodate the UK, whereas a positive opinion of the EU decreases their willingness to compromise. Moreover, many Europeans face an accommodation dilemma that moderates these preferences. Overall, the EU-27 public unsentimentally supports a Brexit negotiation line that safeguards their own interests best.
| S-EPMC9292232 | biostudies-literature
Project description:ObjectivePrior to December 2012, restaurants in South Korea were required to implement only partial smoking bans. This study documents the changes in Korean smokers' attitudes towards smoking bans between 2005 and 2010 and explores the effects of anti-smoking advertising as a correlate of support for total smoking bans in public places.DesignLongitudinal cohort study of Korean adult smokers.SettingThe data were derived from three waves (2005, 2008 and 2010) of the International Tobacco Control (ITC) Korea Survey.ParticipantsThe ITC Korea Survey respondents were a probability-based, nationally representative sample of Korean smokers aged 19 and older. The current analysis includes 995 smokers who participated in Wave 1 (2005), 1737 smokers who participated in Wave 2 (2008) and 1560 smokers who participated in Wave 3 (2010).Primary and secondary outcome measuresChanges in respondents' awareness of secondhand smoke (SHS) harm, attitudes towards smoking bans and personal rules for smoking in private homes and/or vehicles were analysed. Correlates of support for smoking bans in public places were examined using generalised estimating equation regression models.ResultsMore than 80% of Korean smokers are aware of the harms of SHS. The proportion of smokers who support smoke-free restaurants or smoke-free bars increased twofold between 2005 and 2010. Smokers who were aware of the dangers of SHS were more likely to support a total smoking ban in workplaces. Noticing anti-smoking advertising or information was not significantly associated with support for a total smoking ban in public places.ConclusionsKorean smokers became more supportive of smoking bans in public places between 2005 and 2008. These results show that smokers' attitudes towards smoking bans can change with the implementation of smoke-free policies, even in a country that has a high prevalence of smokers.
| S-EPMC6701818 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Despite ongoing calls for a more even global distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, there remains a great disparity between high- and low-income countries. We conducted representative surveys among the adult populations in the United States (N = 1,000) and Germany (N = 1,003) in June 2021 to assess public opinion in these countries on the distributive justice of COVID-19 vaccines. We conducted two instances of analytic hierarchy processes (AHP) to elicit how the public weighs different principles and criteria for vaccine allocation. In further discrete choice experiments, respondents were asked to split a limited supply of vaccine doses between a hypothetical high-income and a hypothetical low-income country. AHP weights in the United States and Germany were 37.4% (37.2-37.5) and 49.4% (49.2-49.5) for "medical urgency", 32.7% (32.6-32.8) and 25.4% (25.2-25.5) for "equal access for all", 13.7% (13.6-13.8) and 13.3% (13.2-13.4) for "production contribution", and 16.3% (16.2-16.4) and 12.0% (11.9-12.1) for "free market rules", respectively, with 95% CI shown in parentheses. In the discrete choice experiment, respondents in the United States and Germany split available vaccine doses such that the low-income country, which was three times more populous than the high-income country, on average received 53.9% (95% CI: 52.6-55.1) and 57.5% (95% CI: 56.3-58.7) of available doses, respectively. When faced with a dilemma where a vulnerable family member was waiting for a vaccine, 20.7% (95% CI: 18.2-23.3) of respondents in the United States and 18.2% (95% CI: 15.8-20.6) in Germany reduced the amount they allocated to the low-income country sufficiently to secure a vaccine for their family member. Our results indicate that the public in the United States and Germany favours utilitarian and egalitarian distribution principles of vaccines for COVID-19 over libertarian or meritocratic principles. This implies that political decisions favouring higher levels of redistribution would be supported by public opinion in these two countries.
| S-EPMC8890975 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The field of public health includes a wide scope of activities and professional disciplines, ranging from sanitation, health protection, epidemiology, environmental health, financing, health promotion, including supervision, or the provision of clinical care. Each of these disciplines works in systems that face ethical dilemmas, making it important that public health workers have motivation to understand and practice within the ethical guidelines of their profession, thus making ethics an important component of training and practice. The dangers of ethical lapses are overwhelmingly apparent in the case of the Eugenics movement of the early 20th century which metamorphosed from forced sterilizations in many liberal democratic countries into mass murder of physically and mentally handicapped children and adults in Nazi Germany. Between 1939 and 1941, 180 thousand psychiatric patients along with an equivalent number of handicapped children and adults were killed in an organized extermination program in Germany by lethal gassing. This method was then applied to the industrialized murder or Holocaust of six million Jews and millions of other “untermenschen” (sub human) in the greatest genocide in human history. Shortly after World War II ended the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi war criminals were conducted including medical doctors, and some were executed for crimes against humanity. This was followed by the 1948 United Nations Declaration on Human Rights and by the World Medical Association’s Helsinki Declaration. Both are widely accepted as cornerstone documents—the latter specifically governing ethical standards related to human experimentation—and are revised regularly since being issued in 1964. But genocide has not disappeared, nor has unscrupulous experimentation such as the Tuskegee experiment on black Americans infected with syphilis and left untreated even after the availability of a cure, penicillin. Ethical standards are now required by “Helsinki Committees”—ethical review boards—in most medical facilities worldwide. Ethical frameworks have evolved in part due to bitter experience of ethical failures later recognized and affecting public health standards of practice. Future generations of public health leaders and staff will face many ethical issues such as mandatory immunization of health workers and school children, and assisted death of terminally ill patients.
| S-EPMC7149338 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BACKGROUND:Few studies have examined public opinion about the health care system in the former Soviet region. The objective of our study was to evaluate the population's satisfaction with the health care system and identify factors associated with it in Armenia. METHODS:We conducted a cross-sectional telephone survey among 576 adult residents of the capital Yerevan using Random Digit Dialing technique. Simple and multivariate logistic regression explored associations between potential determinants and satisfaction. RESULTS:A substantial proportion of respondents (45.5%) were dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with the health system. About 49% of respondents negatively evaluated the ability of the system to provide equal access to care. About 69% of respondents thought that the responsibility for an individual's health should be equally shared between the individual and the government or that the government's share should be larger. The adjusted odds of satisfaction were higher among individuals with better health status, those who positively rated equal access and respect to patients in the system, those thinking that the responsibility for health should be equally shared between the individual and the government, and those who tended to trust the government. CONCLUSIONS:This study enriched our understanding of factors that shape the population's satisfaction with the health care system in different cultural and political environments. We recommend further exploration of public opinion about those system attributes that are not directly linked to patient experiences with care, but might be equally important for explaining the phenomenon of satisfaction.
| S-EPMC7640423 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Although the incidence of bacillary dysentery in China has been declining progressively, a considerable disease burden still exists. Few studies have analyzed bacillary dysentery across China and knowledge gaps still exist in the aspects of geographic distribution and ecological drivers, seasonality and its association with meteorological factors, urban-rural disparity, prevalence and distribution of Shigella species. Here, we performed nationwide analyses to fill the above gaps. Geographically, we found that incidence increased along an east-west gradient which was inversely related to the economic conditions of China. Two large endemically high-risk regions in western China and their ecological drivers were identified for the first time. We characterized seasonality of bacillary dysentery incidence and assessed its association with meteorological factors, and saw that it exhibits north-south differences in peak duration, relative amplitude and key meteorological factors. Urban and rural incidences among China's cities were compared, and disparity associated with urbanization level was invariant in most cities. Balanced decrease of urban and rural incidence was observed for all provinces except Hunan. S. flexneri and S. sonnei were identified as major causative species. Increasing prevalence of S. sonnei and geographic distribution of Shigella species were associated with economic status. Findings and inferences from this study draw broader pictures of bacillary dysentery in mainland China and could provide useful information for better interventions and public health planning.
| S-EPMC4772184 | biostudies-literature