BacKGroUND: The most recent WHo recommendations "intrapartum care for a positive childbirth experience" highlight the need to identify women-centered interventions and outcomes for intrapartum care, and to include service users' experiences and qualitative research into the assessment of maternity care. Babies Born Better (B3) is a trans-european survey designed to capture service user views and experiences of maternity care provision. italian service users contributed to the survey. MeTHoDS: The B3 Survey is an anonymous, mixed-method online survey, translated into 22 languages. We separated out the italian responses and analyzed them using computer-assisted qualitative software (MaXQDa) and SPSS and STaTa for quantitative data analysis. Simple descriptives were used for the numeric data, and content analysis for the qualitative responses. Geomapping was based on the coded qualitative data and postcodes (using Tableau Public). reSUlTS: There were 1000 respondents from every region of italy, using a range of places of birth (hospital, birth center, home) and experiencing care with both midwives and obstetricians. Most identified positive experiences of care, as well as some practices they would like to change. Both positive and critical comments included provision of care based on the type of providers, clinical procedures, the birth environment, and breastfeeding support. There were clear differences in the geomapped data across italian regions. coNclUSioNS: Mothers highly value respectful, skilled and loving care that gives them a strong sense of personal achievement and confidence, and birth environments that support this. There was distinct variation in the percentage of positive comments made across italian regions.
Background: The ageing population in Europe is putting an ever increasing demand on the longterm care (LTC) services provided by these countries. This study analyses the relationship between the LTC institutional supply of beds and potential care needs, taking into account the social and health context, the supply of complementary and alternative services, along with informal care.
Abstract:As urban overheating is increasing, there is a strong public interest towards mitigation strategies to enhance comfortable urban spaces, for their role in supporting urban metabolism and social life. The study presents an assessment of the existing thermal comfort and usage of San Silvestro Square in Rome during the summer, and performs the simulation of cooling strategies scenarios, to understand their mitigation potential for renovation projects. The first stage concerns a field analysis of the thermal and radiative environment on the 1st and 2nd of August 2014, including meteorological measurements and unobtrusive observations, to understand how people experience and respond to extreme microclimate conditions. In the second stage, the research proposes scenario simulations on the same day to examine the influence of cool colored materials, trees and vegetative surfaces on thermal comfort. The thermal comfort assessment was based on Physiologically Equivalent Temperature (PET), whereas microclimatic simulations were conducted with CFD calculations (ENVImet v.4.3.1). The first stage shows a strong relationship between lower PET values and attendance rate, depending on daily shading patterns. The second stage shows a relevant improvement of thermal comfort, with PET values of −12 • C comparing to the no-intervention scenario, associated with a combination of cool materials and trees.
The progressively emerging concept of urban resilience to climate change highlights the importance of mitigation and adaptation measures, and the need to integrate urban climatology in the design process, in order to better understand the multiple effects of combined green and cool technologies for the transition to climate responsive and thermally comfortable urban open spaces. This study focuses the attention on selected mitigation and adaptation technologies; two renovation scenarios were designed and modeled according to the minimal intervention criterion. The study pays attention to the effect on surface temperature and physiological equivalent temperature (PET) of vegetation and high albedo materials characterizing the horizontal boundaries of the site. The Sapienza University campus, a historical site in Rome, is taken as a case study. These results highlight the importance of treed open spaces and the combination of permeable green pavements associated with cool roofs as the most effective strategy for the mitigation of summer heatwaves and the improvement of outdoor thermal comfort.
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