The Role of Screenings Methods and Risk Profile Assessments in Prevention and Health Promotion Programmes: An Ethnographic Analysis

In prevention and health promotion interventions, screening methods and risk profile assessments are often used as tools for establishing the interventions’ effectiveness, for the selection and determination of the health status of participants. The role these instruments fulfil in the creation of effectiveness and the effects these instruments have themselves remain unexplored. In this paper, we have analysed the role screening methods and risk profile assessments fulfil as part of prevention and health promotion programmes in the selection, enrolment and participation of participants. Our analysis showed, that screening methods and health risk assessments create effects as they objectify health risks and/or the health status of individuals, i.e., they select the individuals ‘at risk’ and indicate the lifestyle modifications these people are required to make in order to improve their health. Yet, these instruments also reduce the group of participants thereby decreasing the possible effect of interventions, as they provide the legitimisation for people to make choices to whether they enrol or not and what lifestyle changes they incorporate into their lives. In other words, they present a space of interaction, in which agency is distributed across the practice nurses, the participants and the instruments. Decisions were not just made upon the projection of the outcomes of these instruments; decisions that were made by both the patients and practice nurses were the resultant of their opinions on these outcomes that were formed in interaction with the instruments

Inequality and the composition of taxes

This paper analyzes the political economics of the composition of taxes. Taxes may be levied on income, or on expenditure, with the median voter pivotal in the theoretical framework analyzed. As in Meltzer and Richard (1981) income taxes increase with inequality. Conversely expenditure taxes first increase and then decrease with increasing inequality. The extent to which taxes are levied on income relative to expenditure unambiguously rises with inequality. In contrast to government size evidence, cross-country data exhibit a robust positive correlation between the extent to which taxes are levied on income relative to expenditure, and inequality. Consistent with the theory this relationship holds most significantly in stronger democracies

The anterior talo-fibular ligament reconstruction in surgical treatment of chronic lateral ankle instability

Chronic lateral ankle instability causes significant problems in physical activity and accelerates development of osteoarthritic changes. The results of treatment for chronic ankle instability are often meets controversial. A surgical reconstruction of ATFL as described in this paper was performed during the period 1997–2005 on 47 patients (26 male, 21 female), with a mean age of 29.3 years. The average follow-up period was 46.2 months. All patients had clinical examination, X-ray and MRI. The mean values of the Good score improved from an average 3.32 prior to surgery to 1.19 one year after the operation. Paired t-tests showed improvements of great significance (p < 10−28). The Good score prior to surgery ranged from 2–4, whereas the scores one year after surgery were either 1 or 2, with a score of 1 being recorded in 38 cases (81%). In the postoperative follow-up, MRI showed a newly-formed ligament structure in all cases. The authors describe their own technique for a reconstruction of lateral ankle instability using remnants of the former ATFL. The scar tissue seems to be sufficient to form a new duplicated structure providing good stability. MRI proved to be a sensitive and specific method for identifying the extent of talo-fibular ligament injury