Education Commons^™

Understanding Mesosystemic Influences On Reported Health Among Rural Low-Income Women: A Structural Equation Analysis, Tiffany Wigington

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

While ensuring access to health insurance and health care services is important, emerging research indicates that individual health and well-being result from a complex array of environmental, social, and psychological factors. The delineation of how factors of health and well-being unfold and impact rural low-income women is particularly salient for social workers who provide services to rural residents and who work within a rural context. Utilizing components from the ecological systems perspective, this study explored how the factors associated with health risk influenced reported health and mesosystemic processes among rural low-income women. This sample (n=304) for this study was drawn …

Psychosocial Aspects Of Physical Activity And Fitness In Special-Population, Minority Middle School Children, Jeffrey J. Martin, Nate Mccaughtry, Anne S. Murphy, Sara Flory, Kimberlydawn Wisdom

Kinesiology, Health and Sport Studies

Special-population research predicting physical activity (PA) and fitness with minority middle school children from at-risk environments is rare. Hence, the purpose of our investigation was to evaluate the ability of important social cognitive and environment-based measures to predict PA and fitness with children with developmental delay, cognitive, and emotional impairments. Children (N = 89, ages 11-15) completed questionnaires assessing social cognitive and environment-based constructs, self report PA, and completed fitness testing. Correlational results supported some hypotheses. The descriptive and correlational results also indicated commonalities with similar research on non special-population minority middle school children from at-risk environments.

Different Methods For Ethical Analysis In Health Technology Assessment: An Empirical Study, Samuli Saarni, Annette J. Braunack-Mayer, Bjorn Hofmann, Gert-Jan Van Der Wilt

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Objectives: Ethical analysis can highlight important ethical issues related to implementing a technology, values inherent in the technology itself, and value-decisions underlying the health technology assessment (HTA) process. Ethical analysis is a well-acknowledged part of HTA, yet seldom included in practice. One reason for this is lack of knowledge about the properties and differences between the methods available. This study compares different methods for ethical analysis within HTA.

Methods: Ethical issues related to bariatric (obesity) surgery were independently evaluated using axiological, casuist, principlist, and EUnetHTA models for ethical analysis within HTA. The methods and results are presented and compared.

Results: …

Promoting Health And Nutrition Through Sport: Attitudes Of The Junior Sporting Community, Bridget Kelly, Louise A. Baur, Adrian E. Bauman, Lesley King, Kathy Chapman, Ben J. Smith

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

This study aimed to provide information on parents', children's and sporting officials' attitudes to sponsorship arrangements, and their support of potential policy interventions to reorient sponsorship to be more health promoting. Methods: Sports clubs (n=20) known to have food and beverage sponsors in Sydney, Illawarra and Canberra/Queanbeyan were selected. Parents and children at sports clubs were recruited through convenience sampling by approaching those attending the sports club at the time of the survey and those children who had a signed consent form. Sports clubs were visited between May and November 2010. At each club, one sports club official, ten parents …

Balance, Balancing And Health, Wendy Lipworth, Claire Hooker, Stacy M. Carter

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

In this article we explore the concept of balance in the context of health. We became interested in balance during a grounded theory study of lay conceptualizations of cancer risk in which participants were concerned with having a good life, which relied heavily on balancing processes. This led us to the qualitative literature about balance in the context of health, which was large and in need of synthesis. We identified 170 relevant studies and used Thomas and Harden's technique of thematic synthesis to identify key balance-related themes and develop these into more abstract analytic categories. We found that balance and …

The Alpha Health-Related Physical Fitness Test Battery For Children And Adolescents, Rute Santos, Jorge Mota

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

In this issue of Nutricion Hospitalaria, Ruiz and colleagues present the new health-related fitness test battery for youth based upon the work developed by the ALPHA (Assessing Levels of Physical Activity) study. The ALPHA was a study funded by the European Union aimed "to provide a set of instruments for assessing levels of physical activity, its underlying factors (e.g. build environment, transport, and workplace), as well as, fitness in a comparable way within the European Union". The work presented in this issue by Ruiz and colleagues relates to the working package 6 of the ALPHA project -Assessing Healthrelated Physical Fitness- …

A Climate Of Ill Health, Noel Castree

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Book review of: CHANGING PLANET, CHANGING HEALTH: How the Climate Crisis Threatens Our Health and What We Can Do about It. Paul R. Epstein and Dan Ferber. xii + 355 pp. University of California Press, 2011. $29.95.

Ethnic Differences In Adolescent Mental Health Trajectories And The Influence Of Racism And Context: The Determinants Of Adolescent Social Well-Being And Health (Dash) Study, Thomas E. Astell-Burt, Maria J. Maynard, Erik Lenguerrand, Seeromanie Harding

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Abstract presented at the Society for Longitudinal and Life Course Studies Inaugural Conference, 22-24 September 2010, Cambridge, United Kingdom.

Dairy Constituents And Neurocognitive Health In Ageing, David A. Camfield, Lauren Owen, Andrew Scholey, Andrew Pipingas, Con Stough

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Age-related cognitive decline (ARCD) and dementia are of increasing concern to an ageing population. In recent years, there has been considerable research focused on effective dietary interventions that may prevent or ameliorate ARCD and dementia. While a number of studies have considered the impact that dairy products may have on physiological health, particularly with regard to the metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular health, further research is currently needed in order to establish the impact that dairy products have in the promotion of healthy brain function during ageing. The present review considers the available evidence for the positive effects of dairy products …

Combining The Health Belief Model And Social Marketing To Develop A Community-Level Campaign About Asthma For Older Adults, Uwana Evers, Sandra C. Jones, Peter Caputi, Donald C. Iverson

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

This conceptual paper provides a rationale for combining health behaviour theory with a social marketing framework in order to develop a community-level asthma campaign for adults aged 55 years and older. The prevalence of asthma in older adults in Australia is approximately 10%, higher than in many other countries, and asthma mortality increases with age. In addition, older adults' perceptions of asthma causes and treatments are often inaccurate. Many older adults believe that asthma is a childhood disease and that the effects of the condition are relatively minor and would not impact on daily life. In order to address these …

Evaluating Mediated Perception Of Narrative Health Messages: The Perception Of Narrative Performance Scale, Jeong Kyu Lee, Michael L. Hecht, Michelle Miller-Day, Elvira Elek

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Narrative media health messages have proven effective in preventing adolescents' substance use but as yet few measures exist to assess perceptions of them. Without such a measure it is difficult to evaluate the role these messages play in health promotion or to differentiate them from other message forms. In response to this need, a study was conducted to evaluate the Perception of Narrative Performance Scale that assesses perceptions of narrative health messages. A sample of 1185 fifth graders in public schools at Phoenix, Arizona completed a questionnaire rating of two videos presenting narrative substance use prevention messages. Confirmatory factor analyses …

Shared Health Governance: The Potential Danger Of Oppressive "Healthism", Stacy M. Carter, Vikki A. Entwistle, Kirsten Mccaffery, Lucie Rychetnik

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

We share an interest in public health and in the capabilities approach developed by Amartya Sen, Martha Nussbaum, and others (Comim, Qizilbash, and Alkire 2008; Sen 2009; Nussbaum 1999), so were curious to see how Jennifer Prah Ruger would apply her "health capability paradigm" to health governance. The resulting model-shared health governance (SHG)-has real potential to promote justice in health in some contexts. However, based on the description provided in this issue (Ruger 2011), aspects of SHG seem at odds with important features of the capabilities approach. We suggest that SHG will better safeguard the freedoms of individuals-including their health …