Nadine C Berndt

Directorate of Health, Luxembourg · Epidemiology and Statistics

HIV/HCV prevention among people who inject drugs (PWID) is of key public health importance. We aimed to assess the impact of COVID-19 and associated response measures on HIV/HCV prevention services and socio-economic status of PWID in high-HIV-risk sites. Sites with recent (2011–2019) HIV outbreaks among PWID in Europe North America and Israel, tha...

This paper shows how the second wave of the European Web Survey on Drugs (EWSD) led to a better understanding of the drug situation in Luxembourg. Until the EWSD, detailed information on the drug situation in Luxembourg was very limited, with only a few surveys, often small-scale, having been conducted in the country since the late 1990s. As shown...

National Drug Report 2020

Aims To describe cocaine treatment demand in 10 western European countries and to examine the size, the direction and the temporality of recent trends in the proportion of cocaine users among all clients entering treatment. Design Aggregated data collected through the EU standardised treatment demand monitoring system (TDI) between 2011 and 2018 w...

As a result of the national measures that have been implemented to contain and mitigate the pandemic of the COVID-19 across Luxembourg, drug services are facing unprecedented challenges to continue providing adequate care to people who use drugs in the community and in prisons. The Luxembourg Focal Point of the EMCCDA (PFLDT) invited the national t...

Part II: Factors that Enable or Inhibit HTA Impact Assessment Activities in HTA Agencies This report presents the results of an intensive qualitative investigation into the factors that enable or inhibit HTA agencies in their implementation of HTA impact assessment. In this study, a social cognitions lens is used to uncover the sources of support f...

Part I: HTA Impact Assessment Practices in INAHTA Member Agencies In this report, the findings of an environmental scan of INAHTA member agencies are presented. The detailed impact assessment practices, including the types of decisions informed by HTAs, the indicators of HTA impact that are assessed, and methods and tools used to assess impact are...

This factsheet presents an overview of the drug phenomenon in Luxembourg, covering drug policy, drug supply and demand, drug use patterns, health consequences and responses, as well as drug markets and crime. The statistical data reported relate to 2018 or the most recent year for which data are available and were provided to the Luxembourg Focal P...

The 2018 edition of the national report on the state of the drugs problem in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg aims to describe the framework in which drug use and drug trafficking evolve at the national level by providing a comprehensive overview of historical developments and recent trends.

Introduction Health technology assessment (HTA) agencies wish to ensure the impact of their HTAs. HTA impact assessment measures the influence of a HTA on decision-making and downstream to patient outcomes. Despite their potential to provide insights, the use of impact assessment frameworks by HTA agencies is limited. Understanding the underlying m...

Objectives: The health technology assessment (HTA) Core Model® is a tool for defining and standardizing the elements of HTA analyses within several domains for producing structured reports. This study explored the parallels between the Core Model and a national HTA report. Experiences from various European HTA agencies were also investigated to det...

Health Technology Assessments (HTAs) liefern für zahlreiche Entscheidungen im Gesundheitswesen relevante Informationen. Die Erstellung Matthias Perleth1 Petra Schnell-Inderst2,3 von HTA-Berichten erfordert gut ausgebildete, interdisziplinär arbeitende Alric Rüther4 Spezialisten, die angemessene Interpretation und Umsetzung in Entscheidungen erforde...

Intensive behavioral counseling interventions combined with nicotine replacement therapy have increased smoking abstinence rates in cardiac patients, but little is known about their feasibility when initiated upon hospital admission and continued post-discharge. The current study was an evaluation of the use, appreciation, and fidelity of two post-...

Background Without assistance, smokers being admitted to the hospital for coronary heart disease often return to regular smoking within a year. Objective This study assessed the 12-month effectiveness of a telephone and a face-to-face counselling intervention on smoking abstinence among cardiac patients. Differential effects for subgroups varying i...

Smoking cessation is the most effective action for cardiac patients who smoke to improve their prognosis, yet more than one-half of cardiac patients continue to smoke after hospital admission. This study examined the influence of action plans, coping plans and self-efficacy on intention to quit and smoking cessation in cardiac patients. Cardiac pat...

Aims Increase awareness of the need for conducting economic evaluations alongside behavior change intervention studies; alert to methodological challenges when conducting an economic evaluation; draw attention to ways to improve the quality and uniformity of the economic methodology to increase their value and uptake in the health promotion field....

The objectives of this study were to determine the accuracy of smoking cessation self-reports by cardiac patients who participated in a smoking cessation program, and to determine which patient characteristics are associated with an inaccurate self-report during a follow-up interview 12 months after the start of the program. Smoking cessation self-...

This study examined the cost-effectiveness and cost-utility of two smoking cessation counseling interventions differing in their modality for patients diagnosed with coronary heart disease from a societal perspective. In a randomized controlled trial conducted in Dutch hospital wards, cardiac patients who smoked prior to admission were allocated to...

The data gathered and synthetized in this Core HTA show that at present there is little evidence of any effect (positive or negative) of IVIG on Alzheimer’s Disease and Mild Cognitive Impairment. Although the evidence base is still small and several trials are still to be completed or reported, the persisting speculative nature of the pathogenesis...

Smoking cessation is the most effective action for cardiac patients who smoke to improve their prognosis, yet more than one-half of cardiac patients continue to smoke after hospital admission. This study examined the influence of action plans, coping plans and self-efficacy on intention to quit and smoking cessation in cardiac patients. Cardiac pat...

Smoking cessation after developing coronary heart disease improves disease prognosis more than any other treatment. However, many cardiac patients continue to smoke after hospital discharge. The aim of this study was to investigate factors associated with the intention to (permanently) abstain from smoking among cardiac rehabilitation patients 2 to...

Purpose: This study tested the long-term effectiveness of two smoking cessation interventions in cardiac patients and differential effects for socio-economic status (SES) and patients' motivation to quit. Methods: In this Dutch randomized controlled trial conducted from 2009 to 2012, hospitalized cardiac patient smokers were assigned to Usual Care...

Smoking cessation interventions for cardiac patients need improvement given their weak effects on long-term abstinence rates and low compliance by nurses to implementation. This study tested the effectiveness of two smoking cessation interventions against usual care in cardiac patients, and conditional effects for patients' motivation to quit and s...

Little is known about the effect of craving on smoking abstinence among cardiac patients who smoked prior to admission and the mechanisms that might facilitate success in smoking cessation after discharge from hospital. This study examined the mediating effect of self-efficacy on the relationship between craving and smoking abstinence and how this...

There is no more effective intervention for secondary prevention of coronary heart disease than smoking cessation. Yet, evidence about the (cost-)effectiveness of smoking cessation treatment methods for cardiac inpatients that also suit nursing practice is scarce. This protocol describes the design of a study on the (cost-)effectiveness of two inte...

The objective of this cross-sectional questionnaire study was to assess associations of a self-report index of sun protection habit strength with sunscreen use in sporting environments and outdoor physical activity. Participants (n = 234) in field hockey, soccer, tennis and surf sports in Queensland, Australia, completed a self-administered survey...

Background and objectives: Smoking cessation treatment practices described by the 5 A's (ask, advise, assess, assist, arrange) are not well applied at cardiology wards because of various reasons, such as a lack of time and appropriate skills of the nursing staff. Therefore, a simplified guideline proposing an ask-advise-refer (AAR) strategy was in...

Young adults participating in outdoor sports represent a high-risk group for excessive sun exposure. The purpose of this study was to identify modifiable social cognitive correlates of sunscreen use among young adult competitors. Participants aged 18 to 30 years who competed in soccer (n = 65), surf-lifesaving (n = 63), hockey (n = 61), and tennis...