Cities and population health.

A majority of the world's population will live in urban areas by 2007 and cities are exerting growing influence on the health of both urban and non-urban residents. Although there long has been substantial interest in the associations between city living and health, relatively little work has tried to understand how and why cities affect population health. This reflects both the number and complexity of determinants and of the absence of a unified framework that integrates the multiple factors that influence the health of urban populations. This paper presents a conceptual framework for studying how urban living affects population health. The framework rests on the assumption that urban populations are defined by size, density, diversity, and complexity, and that health in urban populations is a function of living conditions that are in turn shaped by municipal determinants and global and national trends. The framework builds on previous urban health research and incorporates multiple determinants at different levels. It is intended to serve as a model to guide public health research and intervention

REVISION OF THE PACKAGE TRAVEL DIRECTIVE AND ITS INFLUENCE ON THE CROATIAN TOURISM LAW

The paper explores normative substance of the new Package Travel Directive (2015/2302/EU) and its influence on the Croatian Tourism Law. The new Directive was adopted on 25 November 2015, European Union Member States had to transpose it by 1 January 2018 and it is applicable from 1 July 2018. Internet as increasingly important medium for travel services resulted in surge of various forms of customized travel arrangements and rendered provisions of the old Directive obsolete to the needs modern tourist market. Although 23% of EU travellers still purchase traditional, pre-arranged packages, more and more either buy different parts of their trips separately or buy customized holidays, which are put together by one or more commercially linked traders to suit their needs and preferences. Vast majority of travellers buying packages and linked travel arrangements are consumers within the meaning of the EU Consumer Protection Law. Thus, new Package Travel Directive should result in the enhancement of the consumer protection. New legislation will extend protection of the of the 1990 EU Package Travel Directive to cover not only traditional package holidays, but also give clear protection to 120 million consumers who book other forms of combined travel. Scope of the new Package Travel Directive is substantially wider than the scope of the old Directive. The new Package Travel Directive applies to packages offered for sale or sold by traders to travellers and to linked travel arrangements facilitated by traders for travellers. The new Directive broadens the concept of package and now will apply to different sorts of travel combinations: pre-arranged packages; customised packages and linked travel arrangements. This paper elaborates on normative and substantive influence of the new Directive in Croatian Tourism Law. Following comparative legal overview current Croatian legislation of package travel including applicable sections of the Civil Obligations Act will be inspected

Alternative causal inference methods in population health research: Evaluating tradeoffs and triangulating evidence.

Population health researchers from different fields often address similar substantive questions but rely on different study designs, reflecting their home disciplines. This is especially true in studies involving causal inference, for which semantic and substantive differences inhibit interdisciplinary dialogue and collaboration. In this paper, we group nonrandomized study designs into two categories: those that use confounder-control (such as regression adjustment or propensity score matching) and those that rely on an instrument (such as instrumental variables, regression discontinuity, or differences-in-differences approaches). Using the Shadish, Cook, and Campbell framework for evaluating threats to validity, we contrast the assumptions, strengths, and limitations of these two approaches and illustrate differences with examples from the literature on education and health. Across disciplines, all methods to test a hypothesized causal relationship involve unverifiable assumptions, and rarely is there clear justification for exclusive reliance on one method. Each method entails trade-offs between statistical power, internal validity, measurement quality, and generalizability. The choice between confounder-control and instrument-based methods should be guided by these tradeoffs and consideration of the most important limitations of previous work in the area. Our goals are to foster common understanding of the methods available for causal inference in population health research and the tradeoffs between them; to encourage researchers to objectively evaluate what can be learned from methods outside one's home discipline; and to facilitate the selection of methods that best answer the investigator's scientific questions

Towards Better Understanding Electronic Music Festivals Motivation

Electronic music festivals became one of the most successful forms of tourism for young adults. In the paper, authors aimed to explored the motivation and the perception of the potential visitors of electronic music festivals in Croatia and to identify the key dimensions of electronic music festivals. Instrument used for the primary research was a structured on-line questionnaire distributed among students of the University of Zagreb. In total, 350 questionnaires were collected and analyzed. Factor analyses resulted with three factors concerning motivation (music and fun, travel, socialization). Motives with the highest mean value are closely related with the core of electronic music festival offer, but other motives should not be neglected. Paper provides several recommendations for the improvement of electronic music festival offer and suggest the direction and possibilities for the future research