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Purpose: Patient empowerment has been variously depicted as a new paradigm inspiring the patient-provider relationship. To the authorsâ\u80\u99 knowledge, scholars have focused most of their attention on patient enablement. Alternatively, the ability of health care organizations to establish a comfortable and co-creating partnership with the patients has been overlooked. In an attempt to fill this gap, the purpose of this paper is to delve into the meaningfulness of health care organizations, embracing the â\u80\u9corganizational health literacyâ\u80\u9d perspective. Design/methodology/approach: In line with the exploratory nature of this research, a multiple case study approach was taken. It concerned three large public hospitals operating within the Italian National Health Service. The meaningfulness of health care organizations was investigated drawing on the organizational health literacy construct. Findings: The health care organizations were unaware of several crucial issues to improve their meaningfulness. Problematic organizational health literacy was found to prevent patient involvement and to negatively affect the quality of interaction between the patients and the health care professionals. Practical implications: Inadequate organizational health literacy impoverishes the ability of health care organizations to empower the patients and to engage them in value co-creation. The institutional purposes of empowering the patients and involving them in the provision of care require tailored interventions intended to improve organizational meaningfulness. Originality/value: This is one of the first attempts to examine the meaningfulness of health care organizations through the lenses of organizational health literacy. Both quality of care and health outcomes are expected to benefit from the enhancement of organizational health literacy

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit company supported by Deutsche Post World Net. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its research networks, research support, and visitors and doctoral programs. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E SIZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author. (1984), effort correlates not only with wages, but also with non-monetary compensations. These take the form of relational goods and services by-produced in the delivery of particular services. By paying higher non-pecuniary compensations, the nonprofit sector attracts intrinsically similarly skilled, but more motivated workers, able to provide in fact a higher level of effort than their counterparts in the forprofit sector. On an empirical ground, the paper provides a number of econometric tests that confirm the main predictions of the model in Italy's case. It adds to the available empirical literature by introducing in the analysis direct measures of non-pecuniary compensations and job satisfaction.JEL Classification: I00, J31, L31, L84

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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to discuss the changing patterns of users' behavior in the health care service system. Although patient engagement and health services' co-production are understood as essential ingredients in the recipe for sustainable health systems, some determinants to patient involvement are still widely neglected by both policy makers and health care professionals. Among others, inadequate health literacy performs as a significant barrier to patient empowerment. Design/methodology/approach A survey aimed at objectively measuring health literacy-related skills was administered to a random sample of 600 Italian patients. The Italian version of the Newest Vital Sign (NVS) was used to assess the ability of the respondents to deal with written health information. Moreover, the respondents were asked to self-report their ability to navigate the health system. It was presumed that inadequate health literacy as measured by the NVS is related with impaired self-reported functional, interactive, and critical health-related competencies, paving the way for the inability and the unwillingness of patients to be involved in the health care provision. Findings About half of the sample showed inadequate health literacy. However, poor NVS scores were only slightly associated with limited self-reported functional, interactive, and critical health-related competencies. In general, patients with inadequate health-related skills were not likely to be engaged in the provision of health services. Elderly, people suffering from financial deprivation and less educated individuals were found to be at special risk of living with limited health literacy. Practical implications Limited health literacy is a common and relevant issue among people dealing with the health care service system. The impaired ability to collect, process, and use health information produces barriers to patient engagement and prevents the evolution of patients' behavior toward health care co-production. Originality/value Health literacy is a widely overlooked issue in the Italian national health system. This paper contributes in shedding light on the determinants and effects of health literacy of Italian hospital patients. Besides, some insights on the validity of the methodological tools typically used to assess health-related skills are provided.

Abstract:The European FP7 project HycycleS focuses on providing detailed solutions for the design of specific key components for sulphur-based thermochemical cycles for hydrogen production. The key components necessary for the high temperature part of those processes, the thermal decomposition of H 2 SO 4 , are a compact heat exchanger for SO 3 decomposition for operation by solar and nuclear heat, a receiver-reactor for solar H 2 SO 4 decomposition, and membranes as product separator and as promoter of the SO 3 decomposition. Silicon carbide has been identified as the preferred construction material. Its stability is tested at high temperature and in a highly corrosive atmosphere. Another focus is catalyst materials for the reduction of SO 3 . Requirement specifications were set up as basis for design and sizing of the intended prototypes. Rigs for corrosion tests, catalyst tests and selectivity of separation membranes have been designed, built and completed. Prototypes of the mentioned components have been designed and tested.Keywords: sulphur; catalyst; silicon carbide; membranes; thermochemical cycle.Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Roeb, M., Thomey, D., Graf, D., Sattler, C., Poitou, S., Pra, F., Tochon, P., Mansilla, C., Robin, J-C., Le Naour, F., Allen, R.W.K., Elder, R., Atkin, I., Karagiannakis, G., Agrafiotis, C., Konstandopoulos, A.G., Musella, M., Haehner, P., Giaconia, A., Sau, S., Tarquini, P., Haussener, S., Steinfeld, A., Martinez, S., Canadas, I., Orden, A., Ferrato, M., Hinkley, J., Lahoda, E. and Wong, B. (2011) 'HycycleS: a project on nuclear and solar hydrogen production by sulphur-based thermochemical cycles ', Int. J. Nuclear Hydrogen Production and Applications, Vol. 2, No. 3, Sabine Poitou studied Chemical Engineering at ENSIC (Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Industries Chimiques) in the National Polytechnic Institute of Lorraine (1991Lorraine ( -1994. Working at the CEA since 1998 as Research Engineer, she was involved on nuclear waste treatment and conditioning studies until 2007. Since 2008, her activity has concentrated on industrial development of hydrogen production with nuclear reactor coupled processes. George Karagiannakis received his PhD in Chem. Eng., at the Aristotle Univ. of Thessaloniki, Greece. He has been an Affiliated Researcher at APTL since 2006 and a member of the Nanoparticles and Catalysts Group. He has expertise in catalytic and electrocatalytic studies, with emphasis in those involving hydrogen productions. He has participated in several national and EU research projects.Christos Agrafiotis is a Principal Researcher at CPERI, Chemical Engineer. He received his PhD in Chem. Eng., from SUNY, Buffalο, USΑ. He has more than 15 years of expertise in powder synthesis and catalytic coating of monolithic reactors, participated in several EU-and nationally-funded research projects in these areas, and he is the author of more than 40 relevant publications in international journals and proceedings. Athanasios Konstandopoulos is the Director of APTL and C...

In this work we first model the role of demand- and supply-side factors (labour market adjustment, productive efficiency) in explaining economic growth. Empirically testing the model, we evaluate why different growth regimes may appear in the 20 Italian administrative regions. This exercise uses a two-stage econometric approach. Estimates for the elasticity of manufacturing output to exports are obtained from regional time series: a significant long-run relationship indicates the existence of a demand-constrained growth regime. We then ascertain whether the regional dispersion of supply-side factors has an impact on the regional dispersion of growth regimes. The empirical evidence supports our expectations of strong regional differences. Southern regions are less likely to display demand-constrained regimes. In explanation of these differences, second-stage analysis reveals that a strong role is played by such efficiency-enhancing factors as technological innovation, bank diffusion and 'social capital'. No role is found for labour market rigidities.Export-led growth, supply-constrained growth, dualistic development, long-run relationships,

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