Fostering voluntary informal health mentoring in primary school: what are the teachers’ barriers?

This research article aims to explore to what extent primary schoolteachers foster healthmentoring in their routine education practice on an informal and voluntary basis. Also it aims to identify the barriers school teachers encounter in fostering informal voluntary health mentoring within routine educational practices in Greek public schools. A survey employing a structured questionnaire with a random sample of 240 teachers from 15 urban schools was conducted. Teachers’ socioeconomic profile, three categories of teachers’ barriers (namely school structure, subjective difficulties, powerful others), teachers’ professional development and training in health education constitute the main instrument of the study. Multiple regression analysis was used to analyse the data. The main conclusion drawn from the study is that subjective difficulties and lack of previous training in health–related subjects inhibit teachers from adopting informal health mentoring. Overall though primary schoolteachers are willing to adopt a health-mentoring role despite any reported obstacles

Life quality and rehabilitation after a road traffic crash: A literature review

Road traffic injuries continue to pose a worldwide threat to health and well-being of people. In European Union, for example, each year more than 25,000 people are killed and 1.4 million people are injured or disabled in road traffic crashes (RTCs). Additionally, families of RTC victims and their lives are affected emotionally, socially, psychologically, and economically. It should be noted that as in the beginning of 1990s, however, the majority of available literature is focused on the pre-RTC factors (e.g., prevention) rather than the post-RTCs (e.g., the rehabilitation of severely injured) period. As a result, disproportionally greater weight is attached on the pre-RTCs internationally whereas little is known about the psycho-social and economic burden of the post-RTCs period. In this paper, a literature review including the years 1990-2013 was conducted on the publications about post-RTCs period to investigate the possible problems that prevents studying the life quality and rehabilitation after RTCs. Trauma, traffic, injury, rehabilitation, and satisfaction (related to the services and process) were used as keywords and Scopus database (www.scopus.com) was used for searching. In the first step, 443 publications were obtained. Among 443 publications, 75 publications were recorded as relevant. In addition, three publications were suggested by co-authors and 37 publications were obtained by a book source suggested by the reviewer. A total number of 114 publications are presented and evaluated under different components or "stages" of the post-RTCs' period related to rehabilitation as (a) service utilization indicators (e.g., length of care) and service satisfaction indicators (e.g. satisfaction from services), (b) morbidity indicators (e.g., injury patterns), (c) quality of life indicators (e.g., physical and psychological well-being indicators), (d) social network indicators (e.g., type and frequency of informal care provided by family members), and (e) cost indicators (e.g., overall expenditure). The overall evaluation of the publications in literature, possible implications, suggestions, and future directions were discussed

Under-reporting bicycle accidents to police in the COST TU1101 international survey: Cross-country comparisons and associated factors

Police crash reports are often the main source for official data in many countries. However, with the exception of fatal crashes, crashes are often underreported in a biased manner. Consequently, the countermeasures adopted according to them may be inefficient. In the case of bicycle crashes, this bias is most acute and it probably varies across countries, with some of them being more prone to reporting accidents to police than others. Assessing if this bias occurs and the size of it can be of great importance for evaluating the risks associated with bicycling. This study utilized data collected in the COST TU1101 action “Towards safer bicycling through optimization of bicycle helmets and usage”. The data came from an online survey that included questions related to bicyclists' attitudes, behaviour, cycling habits, accidents, and patterns of use of helmets. The survey was filled by 8655 bicyclists from 30 different countries. After applying various exclusion factors, 7015 questionnaires filled by adult cyclists from 17 countries, each with at least 100 valid responses, remained in our sample. The results showed that across all countries, an average of only 10% of all crashes were reported to the police, with a wide range among countries: from a minimum of 0.0% (Israel) and 2.6% (Croatia) to a maximum of a 35.0% (Germany). Some factors associated with the reporting levels were type of crash, type of vehicle involved, and injury severity. No relation was found between the likelihood of reporting and the cyclist's gender, age, educational level, marital status, being a parent, use of helmet, and type of bicycle. The significant under-reporting – including injury crashes that do not lead to hospitalization – justifies the use of self-report survey data for assessment of bicycling crash patterns as they relate to (1) crash risk issues such as location, infrastructure, cyclists' characteristics, and use of helmet and (2) strategic approaches to bicycle crash prevention and injury reduction.acceptedVersio