Dataset Information

Beyond Individual Lives: Using Comparative Osteobiography to Trace Social Patterns in Classical Italy.

ABSTRACT: Osteobiographical studies have usually focused upon investigating an individual's life experience. However, we can also understand variation in the shape of the life course itself as an object of study: Are there common patterns for how lives unfold within a society? Are there events or experiences that channel life courses? This approach to the life course can be adopted for ancient as well as for modern lives. A key element here is developing new methodologies for characterizing and comparing how lives develop through time, for instance, by ordering biological data in sequence, looking for time-structured patterns in them both by eye and through multivariate statistics. This article presents an initial exploration of this problem, using skeletal and archaeological data on 47 adults from the fifth to third centuries B.C. at Pontecagnano, an urban site in Campania, Italy. The results show both the importance of gender in the life course and the effects of different kinds of physical stress, probably due to specialization in labor. The result is not discrete categories of people but fuzzy envelopes of life possibilities.

SUBMITTER: Robba J

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7250650 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Beyond Individual Lives: Using Comparative Osteobiography to Trace Social Patterns in Classical Italy.

Robba John J

Bioarchaeology international 20190101 1

Osteobiographical studies have usually focused upon investigating an individual's life experience. However, we can also understand variation in the shape of the life course itself as an object of study: Are there common patterns for how lives unfold within a society? Are there events or experiences that channel life courses? This approach to the life course can be adopted for ancient as well as for modern lives. A key element here is developing new methodologies for characterizing and comparing ...[more]

PMID: 32457929

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Project description:BackgroundDue to changes in cancer-related risk factors, improvements in diagnostic procedures and treatments, and the aging of the population, in most developed countries cancer accounts for an increasing proportion of health care expenditures. The analysis of cancer-related costs is a topic of several economic and epidemiological studies and represents a research area of great interest to public health planners and policy makers. In Italy studies are limited either to some specific types of expenditures or to specific groups of cancer patients. Aim of the paper is to estimate the distribution of cancer survivors and associated health care expenditures according to a disease pathway which identifies three clinically relevant phases: initial (one year following diagnosis), continuing (between initial and final) and final (one year before death).MethodsThe methodology proposed is based on the reconstruction of patterns of care at individual level by combining different data sources, surveillance data and administrative data, in areas covered by cancer registration.ResultsA total colorectal cancer-related expenditure of 77.8 million Euros for 18012 patients (corresponding to about 4300 Euros per capita) is estimated in 2006 in two Italian areas located in Tuscany and Veneto regions, respectively. Cost of care varies according to the care pathway: 11% of patients were in the initial phase, and consumed 34% of total expenditure; patients in the final (6%) and in the continuing (83%) phase consumed 23% and 43% of the budget, respectively. There is an association between patterns of care/costs and patients characteristics such as stage and age at diagnosis.ConclusionsThis paper represents the first attempt to attribute health care expenditures in Italy to specific phases of disease, according to varying treatment approaches, surveillance strategies and management of relapses, palliative care. The association between stage at diagnosis, profile of therapies and costs supports the idea that primary prevention and early detection play an important role in a public health perspective. Results from this pilot study encourage the use of such analyses in a public health perspective, to increase understanding of patient outcomes and economic consequences of differences in policies related to cancer screening, treatment, and programs of care.

Dataset Information

Beyond Individual Lives: Using Comparative Osteobiography to Trace Social Patterns in Classical Italy.

Publications

Beyond Individual Lives: Using Comparative Osteobiography to Trace Social Patterns in Classical Italy.

Similar Datasets

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