Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

How Should Health Departments Manage Prenatal Care?, Julianne Nesbit

Master of Public Health Program Student Publications

Objective: To compare how health departments in the southwest district of Ohio manage prenatal care, defined as preventative care provided immediately preceding, during, and following pregnancy, to determine if there is a better management technique based on cost and/or characteristics of jurisdictions.

Design: Qualitative descriptive analysis of prenatal services at local health departments in the southwest district of Ohio for 2004.

Setting and Participants: Health Departments in the southwest district of Ohio.

Main Outcome Measures: Comparison of the types of services currently being used to provide prenatal care services (i.e., direct, contracted, combination, or no service) including budgeting and cost …

From International Sanitary Conventions To Global Health Security: The New International Health Regulations, David P. Fidler

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In May 2005, the World Health Organization adopted the new International Health Regulations (IHR), which constitute one of the most radical and far-reaching changes to international law on public health since the beginning of international health cooperation in the mid-nineteenth century. This article comprehensively analyses the new IHR by examining the history of international law on infectious disease control, the IHR revision process, the substantive changes contained in the new IHR and concerns regarding the future of the new IHR. The article demonstrates why the new IHR constitute a seminal event in the relationship between international law and public health …

Characteristics Of Smokers And Their Knowledge About Smoking At A Teaching Hospital In Karachi, Waris Qidwai, N Zahid

Department of Family Medicine

Objective: To study the characteristics of smokers and their knowledge about smoking, among Family Practice Patients, at a teaching hospital in Karachi, Pakistan. Main outcome measures: Age at starting smoking, duration and number of cigarettes smoked, started smoking under influence of friends, colleagues, family members or self motivation, number of friends and colleagues who smoked, whether smoking is unhealthy, and actual chance of harm to an individual due to smoking is very rare or not.
Results: One hundred patients who visited Family Practice Center were interviewed. Sixty one percent were young married men, well educated and either student, …

The Un And The Responsibility To Practice Public Health, David P. Fidler

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

International Trade Agreements: Vehicle For Better Public Health?, David P. Fidler, Jason Sapsin, Ann Marie Kimball

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Is Public Health Paternalism Really Never Justified? A Response To Joel Feinberg, Thaddeus Mason Pope

Faculty Scholarship

n the preeminent scholarly legal treatise on paternalism, The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law: Harm to Self, Joel Feinberg argues that hard paternalism is never justified because it is superfluous; all reasonable restriction of self-regarding conduct can be justified on (more palatable) soft paternalistic grounds.

In this article, I argue that Feinberg's strategy seems to work only because he "stretches" soft paternalism to justify liberty limitation that is properly described as hard paternalism. I expose Feinberg's strained appeals, and argue for honesty and transparency regarding the bases for paternalistic liberty limitation. If the rationale for public health restrictions on …

Keeping Safe: Field Public Health Nurses' Perceptions, Karen Nielsen-Menicucci Phd, Ms, Rn, Phn

Dissertations

By the year 2005, there will be an estimated 1.25 million workers involved in providing nursing care to individuals in their homes (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1997). There is limited empirical data available on the issue of safety of nurses within the context of home visiting or in the public health venue. Recent research on safety in home visiting has focused on home health rather than public health nursing. The purpose of this study was to explore and explain the perception of safety among field public health nurses. A purposive sample of 19 public health nurses employed in an official …

Use Of Hospitals, Physician Visits, And Hospice Care During Last Six Months Of Life Among Cohorts Loyal To Highly Respected Hospitals In The United States, J. E. Wennberg, Elliot S. Fisher, Therese A. Stukel, Jonathan S. Skinner

Dartmouth Scholarship

Objective: To evaluate the use of healthcare resources during the last six months of life among patients of US hospitals with strong reputations for high quality care in managing chronic illness.

Aids And Adolescents, Rhonda Gay Hartman

Journal of Health Care Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

Economic Efficiency And Consumer Choice Theory In Nutritional Labeling, Michael Mccann

Law Faculty Scholarship

As more Americans consume fast food each year, more Americans are contracting serious diseases related to obesity. Considering that obesity ranks second behind tobacco use as the largest contributor to mortality rates in the United States, and also that it gives rise to greater publicly funded health care expenses than does tobacco, this phenomenon begs the obvious question: To what extent does the growing consumption of fast food contribute to the obesity epidemic and the incidence of disease? If the answer indicates a meaningful contribution, a natural follow-up question then emerges: In a sensible legal system, what instruments would best …

Caught Between Paradise And Power: Public Health, Pathogenic Threats, And The Axis Of Illness, David P. Fidler

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Book Review. From Anarchy To Allottopia, David P. Fidler

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

An Educational Pamphlet Changes Help-Seeking Attitudes For Depression And Suicidality In South Asian Women., D Bhugra, M H. Hicks

Madelyn Hsiao-Rei Hicks

South Asian women suffer disproportionately high rates of suicide and attempted suicide. Yet few intervention studies on this group have been done. A total of 180 British South Asian women were sampled to pilot test an educational pamphlet about depression and suicidality. After reading the pamphlet, significantly more women assessed themselves as willing to confide in their clinicians, friends, and spouses if they felt depressed or suicidal, rather than not telling anyone. Also, more women reported that they felt that antidepressants were helpful for depression after they read the pamphlet. These changes remained four to six weeks later. The pamphlet …

Time-Series Studies Of Particulate Matter, Michelle L. Bell, Jonathan M. Samet, Francesca Dominici

Johns Hopkins University, Dept. of Biostatistics Working Papers

Studies of air pollution and human health have evolved from descriptive studies of the early phenomena of large increases in adverse health effects following extreme air pollution episodes, to time-series analyses and the development of sophisticated regression models. In fact, advanced statistical methods are necessary to address the many challenges inherent in the detection of a small pollution risk in the presence of many confounders. This paper reviews the history, methods, and findings of the time-series studies estimating health risks associated with short-term exposure to particulate matter, though much of the discussion is applicable to epidemiological studies of air pollution …

Unhealthy Politics Of Oral Health, Michele Leonardi Darby

Dental Hygiene Faculty Publications

Editorial. Comments that a survey conducted by national advocacy group Oral Health America found that people from the U.S. are underachievers in access to dental hygiene. Measurement of success in oral health care; Proposal to implement dental hygiene practice laws; Shortage of dentists in rural and inner city communities.

Nevada "Nurselessness": An Acute Or Chronic Condition? An Examination Of The Etiology And Possible Treatment Alternatives, Jeanine Warren-Newmon

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Data released by the Department of Health and Human Services in February, 2001, revealed that Nevada has the lowest number of registered nurses per 100,000 population in the nation. The state’s population is growing faster than the nursing programs are currently able to produce new graduates. Current predictions are that the existing nursing shortage will become more severe and have a longer duration than has ever before been experienced. While there may not be one single identifiable causative factor, the aging nursing workforce, low unemployment, and the universal nature of the shortage magnify the problem. This paper focuses on the …

Age, Gender, Biometry, Refractive Error, And The Anterior Chamber Angle Among Alaskan Eskimos, Robert Wojciechowski, Nathan Congdon, William Anninger, Aimee Teo Broman

Dartmouth Scholarship

The prevalence of angle-closure glaucoma (ACG) is greater for Eskimos/Inuit than it is for any other ethnic group in the world. Although it has been suggested that this prevalence may be due to a population tendency toward shallower anterior chamber angles, available evidence for other populations such as Chinese with high rates of ACG has not consistently demonstrated such a tendency.

Attitudes Of Developing World Physicians To Where Medical Research Is Performed And Reported, John Page, Richard F. Heller, Scott Kinlay, Lynette Lim, Wang Qian, Zheng Suping, Supornchai Kongpatanakul, Murtaza Akhtar, Salah Khedr, William Macharia

Paediatrics and Child Health, East Africa

Background: Little is known about the influence of the site of research or publication on the impact of the research findings on clinical practice, particularly in developing countries. The International Clinical Epidemiology Network (INCLEN) is dedicated to improving the quality of health research in the Developing World through institutional capacity building for evidence based medicine, and provided the opportunity to examine the likely impact of research location and journal location on physicians' practice in a number of the participating countries.

Methods: Physicians from secondary and tertiary hospitals in six cities located in China, Thailand, India, Egypt and Kenya were enrolled …

The Ebmt Activity Survey On Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation: A Novel Instrument For Quality Control, Alois Gratwohl, Helen Baldomero, Alvaro Urbano Ispizua

Turkish Journal of Medical Sciences

The hematopoietic stem cell transplant activity survey of the European Group for Blood and Marrow Transplantation (EBMT) represents a novel modern tool in health care management. Introduced in 1990, it captures annual numbers of hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) by indication, donor type and stem cell source from each individual European transplant team. Supplemented by demographical data and economic factors, team density and transplant rates can be calculated and the impact of economics on HSCT rates can be assessed. As documented in the present analysis, a total of 19,668 HSCT were performed in Europe in 2001 by 599 teams in …

Environmental Health In Public Health, Steven Konkel

Books/Book chapters

No abstract provided.

Top 10 Health Issues Faced By Maine People, Dora Anne Mills

Maine Policy Review

In this article Maine’s Bureau of Health Director, Dr. Dora Anne Mills, outlines the top 10 health issues facing Mainers today. As Mills points out, many chronic health issues would be greatly alleviated if people ate less and better, exercised more, and didn’t smoke. Despite the role of self determination in affecting these behaviors, Mills argues that all can be influenced through more proactive policies at the local, state, and national levels, and changes to our surrounding environments. Only when neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, and communities are structured in ways that promote healthy lifestyles will there be real changes in the …

Public Health And National Security In The Global Age: Infectious Diseases, Bioterrorism, And Realpolitik, David P. Fidler

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Environmental Health In Public Health, R. Konkel, Darryl Barnett, Joe Beck, Worley Johnson

Steve Konkel

A most intriguing question, and one that leads to many debates both inside and outside of the environmental health field, is a definition of environmental health. The answer given is often tempered by one's political slant (i.e., liberal, moderate, or conservative) and by one's professional training (e.g., public health sanitation, chemistry, nursing, ecology, planning, public administration, etc). Although agreement is needed to effectively address the challenges in the field, disagreement often centers on what constitutes environmental health and even on the name or nickname that should be applied to individuals whose primary focus is on one or many aspects of …

Assault-Related Admissions To Hospital In Central Australia, Ged F. Williams, Wendy P. Chaboyer, Philip J. Schluter

Aboriginal Policy Research Consortium International (APRCi)

Objective: To determine the number of assault-related admissions to hospital in the Central Australia region of the Northern Territory over a six-year period. Design and setting: Retrospective analysis of all patients admitted to Alice Springs Hospital (ASH) and Tennant Creek Hospital (TCH) from July 1995 to June 2001, where the primary cause of injury was “assault”. Main outcome measures: Frequency of assault-related admission to hospital; demographic characteristics of the victims. Results: In the six years, there were 2449 assault-related admissions to ASH and 545 to TCH. Adults aged 25–34 years were most frequently hospitalised for assault, in a proportion greater …

Are Differences In Exposure To A Multicomponent School-Based Intervention Associated With Varying Dietary Outcomes In Adolescents?, Amanda S. Birnbaum, Leslie A. Lytle, Mary Story, Cheryl L. Perry, David M. Murray

Department of Public Health Scholarship and Creative Works

Multicomponent interventions are recommended for health behavior change among adolescents. However, it is difficult to disentangle the effects of multiple intervention components. This article reports outcomes associated with varying levels of exposure to a school-based nutrition intervention, Teens Eating for Energy and Nutrition at School (TEENS). Four incremental exposureswere possible: (1) control group, (2) school environment interventions only, (3) classroom plus environment interventions, and (4) peer leaders plus classroom plus environment interventions. Patterns suggesting dose response were observed, with peer leaders reporting the largest increases in fruit, vegetable, and lower fat food consumption. Students exposed to classroom plus environment interventions …

Projected Smoking-Related Deaths Among U.S. Youth: A 2000 Update, Ellen J. Hahn, Mary Kay Rayens, Frank J. Chaloupka, Chizimuzo T.C. Okoli, Jun Yang

Nursing Reports

This paper projects the long term consequences of the rise in youth smoking in the 1990s by updating the state estimates for projected smoking-related deaths among youth in the U.S. using information from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) 2000 and the U.S. Census 2000. This analysis is similar to that from an earlier study published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Office on Smoking and Health (MMWR, 45[44], November 8, 1996). The 1996 analysis used young adult smoking prevalence data from 1994 and 1995; whereas, the analysis presented here represents smoking prevalence data from 2000. …

Validity Of The Cidi Probe Flow Chart For Depression In Chinese American Women., M Hicks

Madelyn Hsiao-Rei Hicks

This article presents observations on the function and validity of the Composite International Diagnostic Interview (CIDI) 2.1 in a study of major depression in Chinese American women. CIDI symptom items for depression had good apparent validity and acceptability. However, CIDI probe flow chart (PFC) ‘clinical significance’ criteria appeared to underidentify cases of major depression if they occurred in China, or in deprived conditions within the U.S. and other developed countries. Validity of the CIDI PFC was affected by social, political and cultural factors. Patterns of bias are discussed and related to assumptions underlying the PFC regarding resource availability, help-seeking and …

Acquired Immuno-Deficiency Syndrome (Aids) And Human Immuno-Deficiency Virus (Hiv) In Nevada – Annual Surveillance Report (1999), Mary Guinan, Nancy Kreher, Drew Mather, Wei Yang

Public Health Faculty Publications

Background:

Acquired Immuno-Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) is the most severe manifestation of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) infection. AIDS was first reported in the world in 1981 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Statewide surveillance for AIDS was begun in 1982. Because the cause of AIDS was unknown at that time, the surveillance case definition included many opportunistic infections and tumors. Persons with AIDS were noted to have abnormalities in their immune system that left them susceptible to certain infections. As more information became available, the AIDS surveillance case definition was modified.

In 1984, HIV was found to be the …

The Study Of Periodicity Of Eating And Public Health Nutrition Issues, Karen E. Harrington

Doctoral

This thesis set out to provide an objective understanding of periodicity of eating in a group of free living adults, by determining the temporal pattern of nutrient intake during eating occasions throughout the day. A dietary assessment study was carried out using a 7-day estimated food diary in a sample of 133 adults recruited from a city local authority. During the survey period, respondents were met on at least three occasions to encourage and motivate them to follow their usual dietary habits and to record their intakes in a as detailed a manner as possible. A combination of quantification methods …

The Globalization Of Public Health: The First 100 Years Of International Health Diplomacy, David P. Fidler

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Global threats to public health in the 19th century sparked the development of international health diplomacy. Many international regimes on public health issues were created between the mid-19th and mid-20th centuries. The present article analyses the global risks in this field and the international legal responses to them between 1851 and 1951, and explores the lessons from the first century of international health diplomacy of relevance to contemporary efforts to deal with the globalization of public health.