Michela Monaci

Cancer is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide (1). Nutrition constitutes a fundamental component of comprehensive cancer care and plays a crucial role throughout the clinical traje...

Health policies and public services are increasingly expected to be evidence‐based, equitable and accountable at the population level. Yet the forms of evidence most commonly prioritised in policy‐making often fall short of capturing how health risks, services and prevention strategies are experienced and navigated across social groups and communities. This gap contributes to persistent mismatches between policy intent and lived social realities, with tangible consequences for population health outcomes, equity and public trust. Drawing on democratic accounts of policy legitimacy, scholarship on civil society as a knowledge intermediary and emerging regulatory recognition of experiential evidence, we propose Listening‐Informed Policies (LIP) as a governance‐oriented approach to population health decision‐making. We argue that listening constitutes a methodologically grounded epistemic practice oriented toward collective knowledge production. When institutionalised, listening can inform population‐level problem definition, policy design, implementation and evaluation, rather than serving merely as a legitimacy‐enhancing exercise. Using liver health as an illustrative context, we outline the core principles of LIP and consider their relevance for the prevention of non‐communicable diseases. Embedding experiential knowledge alongside biomedical and economic evidence—through organised civil society acting as an institutional intermediary—can strengthen population health governance on three complementary grounds: (i) democratically, by enhancing the legitimacy of decisions through the inclusion of affected populations; (ii) epistemically, by rendering visible social mechanisms and constraints not captured by conventional indicators, and (iii) pragmatically, by improving the alignment between policy design and real‐world implementation. LIP integrate these dimensions by positioning listening as a structured form of population‐relevant evidence. Public and Patient Contribution: This viewpoint article was developed in collaboration with representatives and stakeholders engaged in the liver disease community, including perspectives emerging from patient advocacy and public engagement initiatives promoted within the European liver health landscape. The reflections presented in this paper were informed by ongoing dialogue with people living with liver conditions, patient advocates, clinicians, and researchers involved in initiatives aimed at strengthening meaningful patient involvement, communication, and advocacy in hepatology. These experiences contributed to shaping the focus and critical reflections discussed throughout the viewpoint.

Deathcare work—encompassing professions involved in the care, management, and disposition of the dying and the dead—constitutes an essential yet socially invisible workforce (Romão et al., 2025a).W...

After-Visit Summary (AVS) and Discharge Summary (DS) are essential tools for patient-centered care, aiming to improve communication, enhance engagement, an

Background: Palliative care—while overlapping with but distinct from end-of-life care—involves multidisciplinary teams providing medical, psychosocial, and existential support to patients and families facing serious illness. While prior research has examined professional identity in palliative care, the existential dimensions of identity formation—what it means to be a palliative care professional—remain largely underexplored. Aim: To explore the lived experiences of palliative care professionals, focussing on how their professional identity is constructed through the existential notion of “being,” and to identify implications for advancing international education and workforce policy. Design: Semi-structured interviews were analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). Reflexivity, peer debriefing, thick description, and an audit trail were applied to ensure rigour and transparency. Setting/participants: Fourteen Italian palliative care professionals from diverse disciplines (nursing, medicine, allied health) working primarily in community-based services. Results: One Group Existential Theme emerged: Being, encompassing four subthemes—Meaning of Being, Ways of Being, Being Present for Others, and Reasons for Being Present. Across these, participants framed their identity not only around technical competence but also around emotional presence, relational depth, and ethical commitment to dignity in dying. Conclusions: This study advances existing literature by integrating the existential dimensions of “being” into professional identity theory. Findings highlight the need for international education and workforce strategies that embed reflective practice, emotional competence training, and peer-support structures alongside technical instruction, to sustain professionals in death-related work.

Background/Objectives: Open Notes—defined as patients’ electronic, portal-based access to clinicians’ narrative documentation within electronic health records (EHRs)—has become routine through policy and portal initiatives. In mental health (MH), transparency intersects with sensitive formulation and risk language, making outcomes contingent on documentation practices, release timing, and reader support. This scoping review mapped empirical evidence on experiences, perceived impacts, and implementation of Open Notes in MH across stakeholders and settings, deriving implications for practice, training, and policy. Methods: A PRISMA-ScR-guided review was conducted with a preregistered protocol on OSF. Eligible studies examined Open Notes in MH settings and reported stakeholder perspectives. Two reviewers independently screened and extracted data, analyzed through inductive narrative thematic synthesis. Results: Twenty-two studies (2012–2025) from the USA, Sweden, Germany, Canada, and international settings included surveys, qualitative interviews, mixed-methods designs, pilot and quasi-experimental implementations, and a Delphi consensus. Patients consistently reported improved comprehension, recall, empowerment, and—in some cases—greater trust. Large surveys identified error detection and patient-initiated corrections as safety mechanisms, while a minority reported worry or feeling judged by wording. Clinicians adapted documentation—modifying tone, wording, or candor—to minimize misinterpretation. Workload effects were generally modest, limited to occasional clarifications. Implementation and expert studies emphasize organizational readiness, training, patient preparation, and privacy-aware portal design as key enablers of safe transparency. Conclusions: In MH, Open Notes function as a communication and engagement tool that strengthens partnership, comprehension, and safety when implemented with attention to risk-sensitive documentation and privacy safeguards.