Albert Espelt

Bages University Foundation · Department of Epidemiology and Public Health

Background: Mood disorders are the second most prevalent mental disorders in childhood and adolescence. Many undiagnosed people manifest subthreshold symptoms, like low mood, and present worse prognoses than asymptomatic healthy subjects. The aim of this study was to estimate the prevalence of low mood, gender inequalities, and associated factors,...

Introduction: Emotional education programmes are universal preventive strategies for health promotion, especially mental health. The aim of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness and implementation of '1,2,3, emoció!': a preschool-based programme designed to improve emotional competence and targeted to 3-5-year-old children in Barcelona durin...

Background: This study attempts to provide a picture of the hesitancy to vaccination against COVID-19 in Spain during the 2021 spring-autumn vaccination campaign, both in the general population and in healthcare professionals. Methods: The participants were recruited using social media such as Facebook and Twitter, in addition to the cooperation...

Objective: Increasing emotional competence is a health promotion strategy that can be enhanced through school-based emotional education programs. This study aims to describe the participative process to design the emotional education program 1, 2, 3, emoció! aimed at children aged from 3 to 5 years and to analyze the results of the pilot test. Me...

The objective was to estimate the prevalence of polydrug use of tobacco and cannabis and to see its relationship with self-perceived health and mood state in adolescents from Central Catalonia in the 2019-2020 academic year. A cross-sectional study was carried out with a sample of 7,319 students, who answered a self-administered questionnaire. The...

The aim of the study was to identify the environmental factors that influence alcohol consumption, according to university students, and assess the relative importance and the frequency attributed to each factor. A study using Concept Mapping methodology was performed with a sample of nursing students, who participated in two face-to-face data coll...

Objectives The acquisition of emotional competencies through emotional education programs improves both short- and long-term health outcomes. The 1,2,3,emoció! program directed at children aged 3–5 years aims to promote health through the development of emotional competencies. This study evaluated the effectiveness of the program during its first y...

Objective: The aim of this study was to analyse the relationship between physical activity and the incidence of dementia in a cohort of people aged 50 years or older without dementia from different countries in Europe between the years 2013 and 2015. Methods: Prospective longitudinal design study (2013-2015) with a sample of 46,141 people withou...

The aim of this study was to estimate the prevalence of tobacco and cannabis use, and their relationship, in a cohort of adolescents from Central Catalonia in the period 2012–2020. The study had a prospective longitudinal design with 828 students in the 4th year of Compulsory Secondary Education. In 2012, 828 adolescents answered a health behaviour...

In order to assess emotional competence in children, it is necessary to have psychometrically sound measures. To the best of our knowledge, there is no available tool to assess emotional competence in children from 3 to 5 years old that assesses the five emotional competences of the Bisquerra model and can be easily and quickly answered in the scho...

This study aimed to describe the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the social situation, self-perceived health status, and mental well-being of adolescents in Catalonia during home confinement, and to evaluate factors that are associated with poor overall mental well-being. An online cross-sectional study among a cohort of students (14–18 years ol...

Background: The aim was to estimate the prevalence of tobacco and cannabis use and the relationship between these two substances in a cohort of young people from Central Catalonia in the period 2012-2020 according to sex and year of follow-up. Methods: Prospective longitudinal study with 828 students in 4th year of Compulsory Secondary Education (E...

The aim of this study was to identify changes in the hazardous consumption of alcohol, tobacco, and cannabis, due to the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020 in a cohort of schooled adolescents from Central Catalonia. We also analyzed the effect of the individual and social factors on risky consumption during confinement. This longitudinal study involved a su...

Breakfast has a critical role in energy balance and dietary regulation. Consequently, it is considered an important component of a healthy diet, especially in adolescence, when there are great opportunities to consolidate habits and establish future patterns of healthiness in adulthood. Socioeconomic position (SEP) causes inequalities that are refl...

Objective: The use of alcohol and other drugs in youth has adverse health effects, and it is also associated with unsafe sexual practices. For this reason, it is important to include prevention programs in universities regarding alcohol, drugs, and safe sexual practices, and it is essential to evaluate them to prove their effectiveness in the targ...

Objective To determine the predisposition to use roll-your-own (RYO) cigarettes and the beliefs about RYO cigarettes of all the students of 3°–4° of ESO during the years 2016–17 and 2018–19. A cross-sectional study. Setting Bisaura High School from Sant Quirze de Besora. Primary Health Care in the Catalan Health Institute, Catalunya, Spain. Parti...

Adolescence is a critical period in the consolidation of healthy lifestyles that can last into adulthood. To analyze changes in food consumption and eating behaviors in high-school adolescents during the first confinement, a cross-sectional study was conducted at the end of confinement in Spain. Changes in the frequency or quantity of consumption o...

Aims To estimate the prevalence of multimorbidity among European community-dwelling adults, as well as to analyse the association with gender, age, education, self-rated health, loneliness, quality of life, size of social network, Body Mass Index (BMI) and disability. Methods A cross-sectional study based on wave 6 (2015) of the Survey of Health,...

This document aims to describe measures adopted against COVID-19, specially focusing on infection control in the Long-Term Care system in Catalonia. This paper aims to contribute to the international sharing of experiences and lesson-learning. In the future, governance and policy measures will also be analyzed, to contribute to the evaluation of th...

Objective: Many teenagers experiment with addictive substances such as alcohol. The objective of this study was to estimate the frequency of binge drinking among secondary school students and its relationship with sex, grade, and type of school, as well as with urban contextual factors of the school neighborhood: socioeconomic level, density of al...

Background The objective of this study was to describe the temporal relationship between an illicit drug market abrupt disruption and the number of discarded syringes collected from public space in Barcelona. Methods The monthly number of discarded syringes collected and interrupted time-series analyses were used to analyze changes and trends from...

BACKGROUND The internet has become an important tool for many people with health concerns, especially for adolescents. Concerns regarding confidentiality, coupled with the stigma and shame associated with certain conditions, especially sexually transmitted infections and other health-related problems make the internet a safe environment within whic...

Background Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it is more essential than ever to implement protective measures in primary care centers to ensure patients’ safety. This protocol describes a quasiexperimental study on the use of a mobile chat platform as a clinical consultation tool for adolescents and primary health care physicians. Objective The purpose...

Objectives: Alcohol availability and promotion are not distributed equally in the urban context. Evidence shows that the socioeconomic level seems to influence the amount of alcohol-related elements in an area. Some studies suggest that tourism could also affect the distribution of these elements. We explore with a valid instrument in a large city...

We aimed to characterize the availability and promotion of alcohol at alcohol outlets in Madrid and to compare them according to type of outlet and area-level socioeconomic status. We used the OHCITIES instrument to characterise the alcohol outlets in 42 census tracts of Madrid in 2016. We specified alcohol availability as the density of alcohol ou...

The aim of this study was to describe the prevalence of physical and/or sexual violence experienced by women who inject drugs (WWID) and identify associated factors. A cross-sectional study was conducted among 120 WWID in a network of harm reduction centres using an anonymous questionnaire. Oral fluid samples were also collected to estimate the pre...

Background The opening hours of drug consumption rooms could constitute a barrier to access among people who use drugs (PWUD). CAS Baluard is an outpatient substance use care center in Barcelona, which provides a drug consumption room in Barcelona among other services. The objectives of our study were to compare the client profile, the facility use...

Background: We examined educational inequalities in hazardous drinking prevalence among individuals aged 50 or more in 14 European countries, and explored educational inequalities in mortality in hazardous drinkers in European regions. Methods: We analyzed data from waves 4, 5 and 6 of the Survey of Health Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE)....

Objectives: To estimate the magnitude of gender differences in disability among adults aged 60 and older and to evaluate whether they can be associated with social gender inequality and socioeconomic contextual factors at the level of Brazilian federative units. Methods: This is a multilevel study that used data from 23,575 older adults of 27 fede...

Introduction and purpose The purpose was to analyze socioeconomic and clinical factors of psychosocial functioning and self-perception in relation to health-related quality of life (HRQOL) in people with severe mental health illness (SMI) by gender. Materials and method A cross-sectional study was conducted on a sample of 133 women and 90 men. Rec...

This study aims to analyze whether there is an association between poor mental health and high-risk cannabis and alcohol use in adolescents attending secondary schools in the city of Barcelona, and to analyze which individual and/or contextual variables mediate this association. Prevalence of risk of poor mental health, binge drinking, high-risk ca...

The main objective of this work was to estimate the prevalence of disability in European community-dwelling older adults, as well as to investigate differences in the profile of disabled older adults between European regions (Northern, Central, Eastern and Southern). A cross-sectional study based on wave 6 (2015) of the Survey of Health, Ageing and...

Questionnaire of the wave 6 of the survey on health, ageing and retirement in Europe project. (PDF)

The objective of the present study was to examine the magnitude of gender differences in activity limitations among the elderly, and the effect of the health and social individual factors and the context of social gender inequality in Europe. Cross-sectional design was performed. The study population included residents aged 60 years or over from 17...

Heroin users in opioid agonist treatment (OAT) show markedly reduced heroin consumption, less crime and a lower mortality rate. However, the extent of long-term OAT participation over subsequent treatment episodes remains unclear. We analysed the annual proportion of patients in treatment (at least 1 day) since the start of first OAT in 4 European...

Objective: To provide information on persons treated for alcohol use disorders (AUD) over 20 years in a large city in a Southern European country and its trends, adding knowledge on the frequency of treatment from a population perspective. Methods: This is a study of the number of annual admissions to ambulatory addiction treatment centers funde...

Aims: To study mortality in a cohort of cocaine use disorder patients, and compare results in those with concurrent alcohol or opiates disorder. Design, setting and participants: A cohort of 10,539 cocaine use disorder individuals entering drug treatment in public outpatient centres in the city of Barcelona was followed from 1997 to 2011. Partic...

Introduction: This paper describes the presence of alcohol in the public space, assessing establishments that offer it, its advertising, and signs of consumption, as factors that may influence its consumption. Method: Descriptive observational study based on cluster sampling with two-step selection. Results are described, and the spatial associa...

The aim of this study was to estimate the prevalence of binge drinking by regions in Spain and assess the effect of individual and contextual factors related to this drinking pattern in adolescents. A cross-sectional study was performed with data from the 2014 Spanish School Survey on Drug Use (ESTUDES) in students aged 14-18 years (N = 34,259). Th...

Aims: To estimate the prevalence of hazardous drinking in individuals aged 50 and older who had or had had cancer in 17 European countries and Israel and to analyze the factors associated with their consumption. Methods: Cross-sectional study based on data from 2011 to 2013 SHARE surveys. A total of 69,509 individuals aged 50 or more from 17 Eur...

The objectives were to analyze the knowledge about overdose prevention, the use of naloxone, and the number of fatal overdoses after the implementation of Systematic Training in Overdose Prevention (STOOP) program. We conducted a quasi-experimental study, and held face-to-face interviews before (n = 725) and after (n = 722) implementation of system...

Short Guide on counselling for heroin and cocaine overdose. (DOCX)

Key points for training users in the prevention and treatment of overdoses. (DOCX)

This is the S1 File Dataset for Tables 1, 2 and 3. (DTA)

This is the S2 File Dataset for Fig 3. (DTA)

Urban Health Equity Assessment and Response Tool (HEART) is a tool developed by the World Health Organization whose objective is to provide evidence on urban health inequalities so as to help to decide the best interventions aimed to promote urban health equity. The aim of this paper is to describe the experience of implementing Urban HEART in Barc...

Objectives To describe the development and test–retest reliability of OHCITIES, an instrument characterising alcohol urban environment in terms of availability, promotion and signs of consumption. Design This study involved: (1) developing the conceptual framework for alcohol urban environment by means of literature reviewing and previous alcohol...

Background: To estimate the effect of opening two services for people who use drugs and three police interventions on the number of discarded syringes collected from public spaces in Barcelona between 2004 and 2014. Methods: We conducted an interrupted time-series analysis of the monthly number of syringes collected from public spaces during thi...

El abandono del tratamiento por trastorno por consumo de cánnabis en los jóvenes es superior al de otras sustancias y otros grupos de edad. Una de las técnicas que ha mostrado mejorar la adhesión a algunos tratamientos es la gamificación (incorporación de elementos y técnicas de juego en contexto no lúdico). La herramienta más usada por los jóvenes...

Background Many risk behaviours in adolescence are socially patterned. However, it is unclear to what extent socioeconomic position (SEP) influences adolescent drinking in various parts of Europe. We examined how alcohol consumption is associated with parental SEP and adolescents’ own SEP among students aged 14–17 years. Methods Cross-sectional da...

Alcohol urban environment has been associated with individual alcohol behaviors. We are constantly exposed to a wide variety of alcohol products, its marketing and promotion and signs of alcohol consumption that may influence alcohol-drinking behaviors. In this photo-essay, we include photographs that visually explain the exposure to alcohol in the...

The main objective was to estimate the prevalence of disability among older adults in Europe. Besides, we aimed to characterize the profile of disabled older adults, regarding sociodemographic, lifestyle and health-related variables. A cross-sectional study based on the latest data of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) is...

The objective was to estimate the prevalence of disability among older people in 17 European countries. We also aimed to analyze differences in the profile of disabled individuals between European regions, regarding sociodemographic, lifestyle and health-related variables. This is a cross-sectional study based on the last data of the Survey of Heal...

Objective : There is no research examining alcohol-related aggression and anti-social behaviour in UK or European sportspeople (athletes), and no research has examined relationships between masculinity, alcohol consumption, and alcohol-related aggression and antisocial behaviour in sportspeople (athletes). This study addresses this gap. Design Cro...

Objective to present a guide with recommendations for translation, adaptation, elaboration and process of validation of tests in Speech and Language Pathology. Methods the recommendations were based on international guidelines with a focus on the elaboration, translation, cross-cultural adaptation and validation process of tests. Results the reco...

Background: The aim was to compare alcohol drinking patterns in economically active people aged 50-64 years before the last economic crisis (2006) and during the crisis (2013). Cross-sectional study with data from 25 479 economically active people aged 50-64 years resident in 11 European countries who participated in wave 2 or wave 5 of the SHARE...

Background: We aimed to describe gender and region differences in the prevalence of binge drinking and in the association between binge drinking and well-being, among older adult Europeans. This is a cross-sectional study using the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) wave 4, conducted between 2011 and 2012, including 58 489 i...

In order to know about the health of the population, it is necessary to perform a systematic and continuous analysis of their health status and social and economic health determinants. The objective of this paper is to describe the development and implementation of the Infobarris tool, which allows to visualize a wide battery of indicators and soci...

Objective: We aimed to analyse the prevalence of having multiple lifestyle risk behaviours (LRB) and the potential relationship between excess weight (including overweight and obesity) and cumulative multiple LRB among adolescents in Barcelona, Spain. Methods: A cross-sectional study was performed among a representative sample of 3,114 secondary...

Background The objective of this study was to estimate the proportion of undiagnosed HIV or Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection and to assess the risk factors associated with an undiagnosed infection. Methods A questionnaire was distributed among people who inject drugs (PWID) in harm reduction centres in Catalonia, Spain 2008–2012 (n = 2243). Self-...