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In Italy the different regional healthcare models are structured, in order to provide both a single theoretical framework and to enable direct comparisons. In this paper we examine whether and how the regional healthcare systems include alternative medicines and, if so, whether this can be specifically attributed to the different organisational models in place. This analysis will be preceded by a framework to show how in Italy there is a constant and continuous increase in non-conventional medicine (NCM), determined from a research by citizens of a person-centred medicine and preventive. We shall examine how NCM has been incorporated in the National Health System (SSN) in Italy, from the time the Regional Health Systems were set up, and the factors that have contributed to their inclusion or exclusion. After a brief synopsis of the process of growth, distribution and recognition of NCM in Italy, we shall describe how it has been incorporated and consolidated in the regional healthcare systems.

How migrant families are put together and the forms they take varies with the cultural\ud and social origins, though also with the family’s migratory strategy, the sociocultural\ud context of the host country and the latter’s chosen migration policy. Exploratory\ud fieldwork in an Italian area led us to adopt a combined analytical framework in\ud studying such families, bearing in mind both the theory of civic stratification and the\ud transnational perspective of migratory processes. In the first part of the article, we shall\ud explore certain implications of transnationalism and conclude that reunited families are\ud intrinsically transnational. In the second part, we shall apply the concept of civic\ud stratification to the study of family reunification. A third section will analyse some of\ud the results of our fieldwork, on which to validate the combined analytical approach. Our\ud contention is that a transnational perspective and civic stratification can be usefully\ud integrated and provide a new interpretive key to various aspects of family reunification

The presence of migrants as a phenomenon of globalization forces the various world health systems to face up to the problem of inequality penalising this population. Although new to immigration, Italy has seen an increase in immigrant health inequalities. Access to health services is a critical issue here.

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In recent years, Italian citizens have increasingly been asked to share pharmaceutical costs, but at the same time, households' medicines expenditure has decreased. Cost-sharing policies have to be assessed not just in terms of limitation of moral hazard and revenue to the state, but also for equal opportunities for citizen users accessing health services. The aim of this article is to analyze how Italian co-payment policies ("ticket") on medicines may affect pharmaceutical expenditure of households, considering territorial and social groups variation. We reviewed the per capita private spending on medicines of Italian regions, separating pharmaceutical outlay and "ticket." Across the period 2001-2010 we found that the overall per capita private spending on medicines remained substantially stable, although medicine expenditure decreases while the "ticket" increases. When cost sharing rises, out-of-pocket spending on medicines by poorer families seems to remain unchanged; however, poorer families seem to reduce their pharmaceutical expenditure. Our analysis suggests that applying co-payment in Italy is partly successful, in terms of greater revenue to the health system, but in the last few years, cost-sharing increases would seem to have rebounded negatively on more vulnerable families, due to the economic crisis.

Italy is being forced to re-think her health plan as the national health service moves towards regional systems, individuals take more active responsibility for their health, the demand grows for traditional and non-conventional medicine and immigrants join the user list. Person-centered medicine and ever-wider skills attainable with the tools of analysis and research have made a new professional update indispensable. The proposed Master-Course on “Health systems, traditional and non-conventional medicine”, first of its kind in Italy, fits this bill. The new forms of treatment that state and international bodies are prepared to recognize depend entirely on the universities training our professionals with concrete skills in planning, research and health management. Our paper performs an epistemological critique of the new health requirements and goes on to outline the reasons behind this training imperative.

The study of inequality in health concerns the relationship between socially structured characteristics and health outcomes. Howewer, health disparities are also linked to purely individual characteristics and contextual ones. In particular, the contextual effect at a national level may reflect differences in the functioning and performing of national health institutions, that may be conceived as further determinants of health inequalities. In this work we aim at estimating the effect of education on self-assessed health across European countries, taking into account potential confounders like age, gender and family social background. Using a multilevel model with individuals nested in countries, we can achieve two aims. First, we can see whether countries differ in their average self-assessed health score. Second, we can test our hypothesis about the existence of a European social gradient, that is that education exerts a relatively constant effect on self-assessed health. We develop our models using data from European Social Surveys (88,842 interviews).