Javier Alvarez-Galvez

Universidad de Cádiz | UCA

Background: Although at present there is broad agreement among researchers, health professionals, and policy makers on the need to control and combat health misinformation, the magnitude of this problem is still unknown. Consequently, it is fundamental to discover both the most prevalent health topics and the social media platforms from which these...

Background: The widespread use of social media represents an unprecedented opportunity for health promotion. We have more information and evidence-based health related knowledge, for instance about healthy habits or possible risk behaviors. However, these tools also carry some disadvantages since they also open the door to new social and health ris...

Multimorbidity is associated with lower quality of life, greater disability and higher use of health services and is one of the main challenges facing governments in Europe. There is a need to identify and characterize patterns of chronic conditions and analyse their association with social determinants not only from an individual point of view but...

Multimorbidity can be defined as the presence of two or more chronic diseases in an individual. This condition is associated with reduced quality of life, increased disability, greater functional impairment, increased health care utilisation, greater fragmentation of care and complexity of treatment, and increased mortality. Thus, understanding its...

Multimorbidity –understood as the occurrence of chronic diseases together– represents a major challenge for healthcare systems due to its impact on disability, quality of life, increased use of services and mortality. However, despite the global need to address this health problem, evidence is still needed to advance our understanding of its clinic...

The COVID-19 pandemic has contributed to the increase in mortality and morbidity rates globally, but it has also led to a generalized worsening of mental health and risk behaviors in different population groups regardless of the measures adopted by different governments. In this paper, using data from a Spanish survey of emotional well-being, we ai...

Introducción: los estudios sobre patrones de consumo de alcohol en estudiantes universitarios suelen utilizar un solo instrumento para clasificarlos, lo que condiciona las prácticas preventivas y las intervenciones breves. El objeti-vo de esta investigación es identificar los patrones de consumo de alcohol integrando la información proporcionada si...

Purpose: In England, health care policy promotes specialized age-appropriate cancer services for teenagers and young adults (TYA), for those aged 13-24 years at diagnosis. Specialist Principal Treatment Centers (PTCs) provide enhanced age-specific care for TYA, although many still receive all or some of their care in adult or children's cancer serv...

Social polarisation processes have become a central phenomenon for the explanation of population behavioural dynamics in today's societies. Although recent works offer solutions for the detection of polarised political communities in social media, there is still a lack of works that allow an adequate characterization of the specific topics on which...

BACKGROUND During the COVID-19 pandemic, social media platforms have been a venue for the exchange of messages, including those related to fake news. There are also accounts programmed to disseminate and amplify specific messages, which can affect individual decision-making and present new challenges for public health. OBJECTIVE This paper aims to...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.640955.].

Background Identifying common factors that affect public adherence to COVID-19 containment measures can directly inform the development of official public health communication strategies. The present international longitudinal study aimed to examine whether prosociality, together with other theoretically derived motivating factors (self-efficacy, p...

Introduction We aim to understand the factors that drive citizens of different countries to adhere to recommended self-protective behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods Survey data was obtained through the COVID-19 Impact project. We selected countries that presented a sufficiently complete time series and a statistically relevant sample...

Social determinants of multimorbidity are poorly understood in clinical practice. This review aims to characterize the different multimorbidity patterns described in the literature while identifying the social and behavioral determinants that may affect their emergence and subsequent evolution. We searched PubMed, Embase, Scopus, Web of Science, Ov...

Background: The challenge posed by multimorbidity makes it necessary to look at new forms of prevention, a fact that has become heightened in the context of the pandemic. We designed a questionnaire to detect multimorbidity patterns in people over 50 and to associate these patterns with mental and physical health, COVID-19, and possible social ineq...

Background Along with the Covid-19 pandemic we need to fight an ‘infodemic'. Some of the most widespread social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter have implemented policies to combat the spread of misinformation about Covid. However, the online ecosystem is still full of health myths, hoaxes, and fake news that-either conscious...

Background Governments and healthcare systems are facing multimorbidity (MM) as a major challenge due to the difficulties related to its proper identification and clinical management. Despite growing research on MM, its epidemiology is poorly understood due to the great complexity of underlying patterns of chronicity. The present review aims to ide...

Background Multimorbidity (MM) is associated with lower quality of life, greater disability, and higher use of health services. It is a complex problem that is difficult to capture due to the broad spectrum of concurrent chronic diseases involved. There is a need to identify and characterize patterns of chronic conditions in the local context of sp...

Multimorbidity is a growing challenge, associated with reduced quality of life, increased disability, increased health care utilisation, and increased mortality. There is a need to identify associations among patterns of chronic conditions and social determinants of health in the local context of specific population groups. This work aims to respon...

Background: Social media has changed the way we live and communicate, as well as offering unprecedented opportunities to improve many aspects of our lives, including health promotion and disease prevention. However, there is also a darker side to social media that is not always as evident as its possible benefits. In fact, social media has also op...

Vaccination hesitancy is an important barrier for the effective control of the COVID-19 pandemic. Identifying determinants of COVID-19 vaccination hesitancy is essential in order to reduce mortality rates. Further, given the variability of the factors and the different recommendations used in each country, it is important to conduct cross-country r...

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic fundamentally disrupted humans’ social life and behavior. Public health measures may have inadvertently impacted how people care for each other. This study investigated prosocial behavior, its association well-being, and predictors of prosocial behavior during the first COVID-19 pandemic lockdown and soug...

We aim to understand the factors that drive citizens of different countries adhere to recommended self-protective behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic. Survey data obtained through the COVID Impact project was used. We combined previous evidence and change-point detection analysis to establish variations in self-protective behaviors across partic...

BACKGROUND Social media has changed the way we live and communicate. These tools are an unprecedented instrument that may lead to great opportunities for improving many aspects of our lives, including health promotion and disease prevention. However, social media also presents a dark side that is not always so evident as its possible benefits. In f...

A population-based cross-sectional study was conducted during the first COVID-19 wave, to examine the impact of COVID-19 on mental health using an anonymous online survey, enrolling 9565 individuals in 78 countries. The current sub-study examined the impact of the pandemic and the associated lockdown measures on the mental health, and protective be...

Background When cancer occurs in teenagers and young adults, the impact is far beyond the physical disease and treatment burden. The effect on psychological, social, educational and other normal development can be profound. In addition, outcomes including improvements in survival and participation in clinical trials are poorer than in younger child...

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic is a massive health crisis that has exerted enormous physical and psychological pressure. Mental healthcare for healthcare workers (HCWs) should receive serious consideration. This study served to determine the mental-health outcomes of 1,556 HCWs from 45 countries who participated in the COVID-19 IMPACT project, a...

Obesity is a risk factor that exponentially increases morbidity and mortality in the world. Today, new health strategies are being implemented based on the use of social media but the use and effectiveness for these interventions needs to be assessed. The objective of this systematic review is to assess the impact of social-media-delivered weight l...

This study aimed to compare the mediation of psychological flexibility, prosociality and coping in the impacts of illness perceptions toward COVID-19 on mental health among seven regions. Convenience sampled online survey was conducted between April and June 2020 from 9130 citizens in 21 countries. Illness perceptions toward COVID-19, psychological...

Objective: Illness perceptions (IP) are important predictors of emotional and behavioral responses in many diseases. The current study aims to investigate the COVID-19-related IP throughout Europe. The specific goals are to understand the temporal development, identify predictors (within demographics and contact with COVID-19) and examine the impac...

Objective Survival gains in teenagers and young adults (TYA) are reported to be lower than children and adults for some cancers. Place of care is implicated, influencing access to specialist TYA professionals and research. Consequently, age-appropriate specialist cancer care is advocated for TYA although systematic investigation of associated outco...

BACKGROUND Obesity is a risk factor that exponentially increases morbidity and mortality in the world. Today, new health strategies are being implemented based on the use of social media but the use and effectiveness for these interventions needs to be assessed. OBJECTIVE The objective of this systematic review is to assess the impact of social me...

Introduction Suicide is a complex public health problem in contemporary societies. Macroeconomic downturns derived from the economic crisis have been found to be associated with growing suicide mortality in the United States and in Europe. The present work is aimed to assess the association between the recent economic downturns and suicide patterns...

Background The COVID-19 pandemic triggered vast governmental lockdowns. The impact of these lockdowns on mental health is inadequately understood. On the one hand such drastic changes in daily routines could be detrimental to mental health. On the other hand, it might not be experienced negatively, especially because the entire population was affec...

At the aftermath of the 2008 financial and socio–economic crisis, there had been a boom of nationalist parties in Europe that included anti–immigration measures in their programs. In this study, we analyse the relationship between socioeconomic status and anti–immigrant sentiment at the regional level by using geographically weighted regression. In...

Abstract: At the aftermath of the 2008 financial and socio–economic crisis, there had been a boom of nationalist parties in Europe that included anti–immigration measures in their programs. In this study, we analyse the relationship between socioeconomic status and anti–immigrant sentiment at the regional level by using geographically weighted regr...

Background: Life expectancy has increased dramatically in all regions of the world over the last years. The average life expectancy in Western Europe was 79 years for males and 84 years for females in 2018. Consequently, the number of people suffering (or at risk of) long-term conditions, such as diabetes, heart disease, musculoskeletal disorders,...

Objectives In England, healthcare policy advocates specialised age-appropriate services for teenagers and young adults (TYA), those aged 13 to 24 years at diagnosis. Specialist Principal Treatment Centres (PTC) provide enhanced TYA age-specific care, although many still receive care in adult or children’s cancer services. We present the first prosp...

The present study aims to explore the association between employment discrimination and health in Andalusia (Spain). This study is based on a sample of 1200 individuals. The employment discrimination indicator was designed is through the results of an open-ended question that refers to other types of discri-mination. Although the category ‘employme...

This research aims to analyse the association between socioeconomic status (SES) and self-rated health (SRH) through its relationship with lifestyle factors, as well as examining these effects stratified by gender and age groups. A cross-sectional study was performed with a representative sample from Andalusia (Southern Spain) composed of 1200 adul...

Resumen El cambio efectivo de la salud mental en España se inició en 1985 con el Informe de la Comisión Ministerial para la Reforma Psiquiátrica, que recomendaba integrar la asistencia psiquiátrica dentro de sistema sanitario general, proveer una atención integral en el entorno del paciente y atender a grupos diagnósticos específicos. El Informe SE...

Objectives This study aimed to identify which are the socio-demographic factors that can describe health information users’ profiles in Europe and assess which are the factors distinguishing users and non-users and their association with the use of health-related online information.Methods Data from the Flash Eurobarometer No. 404 (2014) was analys...

Background: Teenage and young adult cancer services in England are centralized in 13 principal treatment centers (TYA-PTC). These "specialist services" are designed to support caregivers as well as young people. Objectives: To evaluate whether caregivers of young people with cancer had fewer unmet information and support needs if they had all/so...

BACKGROUND The propagation of health misinformation through social media has become a major public health concern over the last two decades. Although today there is broad agreement among health professionals and policy makers on the need to control health misinformation, there is still little evidence about the effects that the dissemination of fal...

Studies on social inequalities in health present contradictory findings when they attempt to describe and identify the complex societal mechanisms that give rise to poor health outcomes and health inequalities. This work aims to study the mechanism of reproduction of health inequalities among different population groups using agent-based modeling....

Background Teenage and young adult cancer services in England are centralised in 13 principal treatment centres (TYA PTC). We sought to evaluate whether caregivers of young people with cancer had fewer unmet information and support needs if cancer care was provided in a TYA PTC. Methods Participants in the cohort study of young people with cancer...

Random forests (RF) is commonly described in social science literature as a black box technique that is difficult or impossible to understand. RF consists of a large number of deep trees, where each resulting tree is trained on bagged data using a random selection of attributes. Therefore, gaining a full understanding of the internal decision proce...

Background: Andalusia has been one of the regions most damaged by the economic crisis in Spain. A qualitative study of the effects of the economic crisis and austerity policies in this region has been conducted within the framework of the IMPACT-A project. This research seeks to analyse the perceived impact of the crisis upon the health of the Anda...

Background: Studies on social inequalities in health present contradictory findings when they attempt to describe and identify the complex societal mechanisms that give rise to poor health outcomes and health inequalities. Objective: This study aims to study the mechanism of reproduction of health inequalities among different population groups usin...

Background The study of the health effects of perceived discrimination based on ethnic and social traits has a long-standing and widespread tradition in epidemiological research, but less attention has been paid to the study of multiple discrimination, particularly its effects on mental health. The present work aims to analyse the association betwe...

Objective International recognition of the unique needs of young people with cancer is growing. Many countries have developed specialist age-appropriate cancer services believing them to be of value. In England, 13 specialist principal treatment centres (PTCs) deliver cancer care to young people. Despite this expansion of specialist care, systemati...

In this study, we disentangle the complex relationship between structural and intermediary social determinants of health in Andalusia (Spain) after the period of economic downturn, with the aim to understand the factors that might be addressed to reduce future health inequalities in socioeconomically vulnerable regions. Data from the IMPACT-A proje...

RESUMEN: La bioestadística es esencial para el trabajo de investigación aplicado a ciencias de la salud, como la medicina, la enfermería o la psicología, entre otras. Sin embargo, a pesar de la relevancia de los métodos y técnicas propios de esta rama del conocimiento, así como de su necesidad debido al creciente incremento de bases de datos sanita...

Despite major efforts in scientific literature to explain and understand the social determinants of health inequalities, the complex association between social causes and health outcomes remains empirically questionable and theoretically puzzling. To date, the studies on social determinants of health has mainly been generated by research techniques...

Welfare states are assumed to play a fundamental role in the protection and promotion of the health and socioeconomic well-being of citizens. However, empirical evidence on the effect of the welfare state is still contradictory. The inconsistency of the results has led researchers to a lack of consensus in defining the mechanisms that might explain...

Agent-based models might be defined as a particular type of computational model aimed at simulating the behavior of autonomous agents and also their interactions under specific contextual conditions. In this methodological case study, a possible application of agent-based model is presented to study how minority ideas spread in society. Specificall...

This paper explores the factors determining collective identities in the Basque Country and Catalonia, paying special attention to language and birth as key domains of ethnolinguistic divide. We will also make a comparison to the case of Valencia, a region with a native language that nevertheless has not developed a nationalist movement. We have pe...

Background: Obesity and depression are two major health issues in contemporary societies. This study aims to address two fundamental questions: (1) what is the impact of macro-level adverse socioeconomic circumstances on depression? and (2) how do macro-level variations in the socioeconomic context affect the relationship between body mass index (...

Perceived discrimination has been found linked to mental and physical health problems. Factors such as race, age, gender, or disabilities can lead to poor health outcomes. However, literature has paid less attention to study perceived economic discrimination of those that are unemployment, have insecure or precarious jobs, especially after the fina...

There is growing interest in applying computational simulation methods to the field of social sciences. Although computer simulation was originally developed in the field of natural sciences, the fundamental motivation to simulate differs little from that of the social sciences such as anthropology, economics, political science, psychology, or soci...

Objective The aim of this research is to identify and analyze the measures for the assessment of stressful life events created/adapted for its use in Spanish adult population, published in national and international literature, with a focus on psychometric properties and its association with health measures. Methods A systematic review was carried...

El presente estudio analiza el impacto de la educación sobre las preferencias de turismo cultural de la población española. En primer lugar, se comparan las variaciones en la asociación de educación y turismo cultural a nivel regional. En una segunda fase se emplea un modelo multivariable de árboles de clasifica - ción para explicar y comprender la...

Background The hypothetical relationship between economic recession and the increase in suicides in Spain is subject to various arguments. In addition to the inherent complexity of capturing and explaining the underlining mechanisms that could describe this causal link, different points of contention have been be identified. The period of this asso...

The present study analyses the impact of education on cultural tourism preferences of the Spanish population. First, the variations in the association between education and cultural tourism are compared at the regional level. In a second phase, a multivariate classification model based in decision trees is used to explain and understand the complex...

La colección Actualidad forma parte del catálogo de publicaciones científicas de la fundación y está destinada tanto al lector especializado como a la opinión pública en general. Cada una de sus ediciones se estructura como informes monográficos para el fomento de la reflexión y el análisis sobre aspectos de relevancia para la sociedad andaluza del...

p> Objective The aim of this research is to identify and analyze the measures for the assessment of stressful life events created/adapted for its use in Spanish adult population, published in national and international literature, with a focus on psychometric properties and its association with health measures. Methods A systematic review was...

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The 2014 National Review of Mental Health Programmes and Services by the National Mental Health Commission drew attention to the need of local planning of care for people with a lived experience of mental illness in Australia and the relevance of a bottom-up approach to understanding “services available locally [in] the developm...