Environmental Public Health Commons^™

Implementación De Políticas De Prevención Y Control De La Obesidad Infantil En Estados Unidos Y Latinoamérica: Lecciones Para La Investigación Y La Práctica Transfronterizas, Mireya Vilar-Compte, Rafael Perez-Escamilla, Elizabeth Rhodes, Olga L. Sarmiento, Camila Corvalan, Rachel Sturke, Susan Vorkoper

Department of Public Health Scholarship and Creative Works

Aunque se han hecho avances en el desarrollo y aplicación a gran escala de inter-venciones eficaces contra la obesidad infantil, los retos siguen siendo importantes. Nuestro objetivo era comprender las causas del éxito de Estados Unidos y los países latinoamericanos en la implementación de políticas y programas (PYP) contra la obe-sidad e identificar oportunidades de mejora aplicando los principios de la ciencia de la implementación. Seleccionamos tres estudios de comparación de casos: (1) el etique-tado frontal en los envases de alimentos (México y Chile), (2) los programas de calles abiertas y calles para el juego (Colombia y Estados Unidos) y …

Costos De La Licencia De Maternidad Para Apoyar La Lactancia Materna En Brasil, Ghana Y México, Mireya Vilar-Compte, Graciela M. Teruel, Diana Flores-Peregrina, Grace J. Carroll, Gabriela S. Buccini, Rafael Perez-Escamilla

Department of Public Health Scholarship and Creative Works

Objective To develop a method to assess the cost of extending the duration of maternity leave for formally-employed women at the national level and apply it in Brazil, Ghana and Mexico. Methods We adapted a World Bank costing method into a five-step method to estimate the costs of extending the length of maternity leave mandates. Our method used the unit cost of maternity leave based on working women’s weekly wages; the number of additional weeks of maternity leave to be analysed for a given year; and the weighted population of women of reproductive and legal working age in a given …

Costing Of Actions To Safeguard Vulnerable Mexican Households With Young Children From The Consequences Of Covid-19 Social Distancing Measures, Mireya Vilar-Compte, Víctor Pérez, Graciela Teruel, Aranzazu Alonso, Rafael Pérez-Escamilla

Department of Public Health Scholarship and Creative Works

COVID-19 has imposed unprecedented challenges to society. As the pandemic evolves, the social distancing measures that have been globally enforced, while essential, are having undesirable socioeconomic side effects particularly among vulnerable populations. In Mexico, families who depend upon informal employment face increased threats to their wellbeing, and households who in addition have young children may face long-term consequences. The Mexican government has not yet taken actions, but a coalition of non-governmental organizations is advocating in partnership with academic institutions for social protection actions such as a cash transfer and basic services subsidies for families with young children, subsisting from the …

Development Of A Diabetes Self-Management + Mhealth Program: Tailoring The Intervention For A Pilot Study In A Low-Income Setting In Mexico, Robin Whittemore, Mireya Vilar-Compte, Soraya Burrola-Méndez, Annel Lozano-Marrufo, Roberta Delvy, Mariana Pardo-Carrillo, Selene De La Cerda, Ninfa Pena-Purcell, Rafael Pérez-Escamilla

Department of Public Health Scholarship and Creative Works

Background: Type 2 diabetes (T2D) is a public health pandemic disproportionately affecting low- and middle-income countries. The purpose of this formative research was to adapt evidence-based diabetes self-management education programs to the context of Seguro Popular clinics in Mexico. A theory-based mHealth (pictorial text messaging) component was developed.

Method: Our formative research and development of the program protocol consisted of six phases: (1) interviews and focus groups with stakeholders on the challenges to T2D management, curriculum content needs, and the use of mHealth as a supplement to a DSME program; (2) review of the theoretical underpinning, curriculum, and interactive strategies …

An Iterative Process For Training Design And Implementation Increased Health Workers' Knowledge For Taking Nutrition Behavior Change To Scale, Wendy Gonzalez, Anabelle Bonvecchio Arenas, Armando García-Guerra, Mireya Vilar-Compte, Alejandría Villa De La Vega, Laura Quezada, Cynthia Rosas, Ana Lilia Lozada-Tequeanes, Amira Hernández

Department of Public Health Scholarship and Creative Works

The shortage of skilled, motivated, and well-supported health workers is a major barrier to scaling up nutrition interventions and services. Objective: The objective of this study is to describe the process for developing and implementing a training of health personnel for the delivery of the Integrated Strategy for Attention to Nutrition (EsIAN), an evidence-based strategy for promoting infant and young child feeding through primary health care in Mexico. The specific objective is to provide a case study and highlight challenges, as well as elements to successfully mitigate these, and discuss potential applications of findings beyond the Mexican context. Methods: The …

Lessons From The Trenches: Meeting Evaluation Challenges In School Health Education, Michael Young, George Denny, Joseph Donnelly

Department of Public Health Scholarship and Creative Works

BACKGROUND: Those involved in school health education programs generally believe that health education programs can play an important role in helping young people make positive health decisions. Thus, it is to document the effects of such programs through rigorous evaluations published in peer‐reviewed journals.

METHODS: This paper helps the reader understand the context of school health program evaluation, examines several problems and challenges, shows how problems can often be fixed, or prevented, and demonstrates ways in which challenges can be met. A number of topics are addressed, including distinguishing between curricula evaluation and evaluation of outcomes, types of evaluation, identifying …

The Significance Of Race For Neighborhood Social Cohesion: Perceived Difficulty Of Collective Action In Majority Black Neighborhoods, Tamara Leech, Tara Hobson-Prater

Department of Public Health Scholarship and Creative Works

This article explores William Julius Wilson's contentions about community cultural traits by examining racial differences in middle class neighborhoods' levels of social cohesion. Specifically, we explore the perceived difficulty of these actions-as opposed to general pessimism about their outcomes-as a potential explanation for low levels of instrumental collective action in Black middle class neighborhoods. Our results indicate that, regardless of other neighborhood factors, majority Black neighborhoods have low levels of social cohesion. We also find that this racial disparity is statistically explained by shared perceptions about the amount of effort required to engage in group action in different neighborhoods. These …

College Student Perceptions On Campus Alcohol Policies And Consumption Patterns, Brenda L. Marshall, Katherine J. Roberts, Joseph Donnelly, Imani N. Rutledge

Department of Public Health Scholarship and Creative Works

Environmental strategies for colleges and universities to reduce alcohol consumption among their students include the development and enforcement of campus alcohol policies. This study examines students' knowledge and attitudes toward campus alcohol policies and how they relate to alcohol consumption and alcohol social norms. A sample of 422 freshman students was surveyed during their first month at a 4-year public college. Findings indicated that the majority of students (89%) were aware of campus policies, yet of those who were aware, less than half (44%) were accepting of these campus rules and regulations. In addition, the majority (79%) of students drank …

Principal Component Analysis Of Dietary And Lifestyle Patterns In Relation To Risk Of Subtypes Of Esophageal And Gastric Cancer, Stephanie A. Navarro Silvera, Susan T. Mayne, Harvey A. Risch, Marilie D. Gammon, Thomas Vaughan, Wong-Ho Chow, Joel A. Dubin, Robert Dubrow, Janet Schoenberg, Janet L. Stanford, A. Brian West, Heidrun Rotterdam, William J. Blot

Department of Public Health Scholarship and Creative Works

Purpose

To carry out pattern analyses of dietary and lifestyle factors in relation to risk of esophageal and gastric cancers.

Methods

We evaluated risk factors for esophageal adenocarcinoma (EA), esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC), gastric cardia adenocarcinoma (GCA), and other gastric cancers (OGA) using data from a population-based case-control study conducted in Connecticut, New Jersey, and western Washington state. Dietary/lifestyle patterns were created using principal component analysis (PCA). The impact of the resultant scores on cancer risk was estimated through logistic regression.

Results

PCA identified six patterns: meat/nitrite, fruit/vegetable, smoking/alcohol, legume/meat alternate, GERD/BMI, and fish/vitamin C. Risk of each …

Developing A School Functioning Index For Middle Schools, Amanda Birnbaum, Leslie A. Lytle, Cheryl L. Perry, David Murray, Mary Story

Department of Public Health Scholarship and Creative Works

Despite widespread recognition of schools' role in the healthy development of youth, surprisingly little research has examined the relationships between schools' overall functioning and the health‐related behavior of students. School functioning could become an important predictor of students' health‐related behavior and may be amenable to intervention. This paper describes the development and testing of the School Functioning Index (SFI) as a first step in investigating this question. The index was developed for use with middle schools and conceived as a predictor of students' violent behavior, with the potential for extending research applications to additional health and social behaviors. Using social …

Residential Modifications And Decline In Physical Function Among Community-Dwelling Older Ad, Sze Yan Liu, Kate L. Lapane

Department of Public Health Scholarship and Creative Works

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to quantify the effect of residential modification on decreasing the risk of physical function decline in 2 years.

Design: Cohort study using propensity scores method to control for baseline differences between individuals with residential modifications and those without residential modifications.

Participants: Participants (N = 9,447) were from the Second Longitudinal Study on Aging, a nationally representative sample of the civilian noninstitutionalized population, aged 70 years and older in the United States at the time of baseline interview in 1994-1995.

Methods: Participants self-reported residential modifications at baseline (e.g., railings, bathroom modifications). The decline in …

Oral Contraceptive Use And Risk Of Breast Cancer Among Women With A Family History Of Breast Cancer: A Prospective Cohort Study, Stephanie A. Navarro Silvera, Anthony B. Miller, Thomas E. Rohan

Department of Public Health Scholarship and Creative Works

Family history of breast cancer is an established risk factor for breast cancer. In addition, there is evidence that oral contraceptive use may be associated with a moderate increase in breast cancer risk. The three cohort studies that have investigated the relationship between oral contraceptive use and breast cancer risk among women with a family history of breast cancer have yielded mixed results, possibly due to the relatively small sample sizes employed and/or differences in the selection of covariates for inclusion in multivariate models. Therefore, we examined the association between oral contraceptive use and breast cancer risk in a large …

Dietary Folate, Alcohol Consumption, And Risk Of Ovarian Cancer In An Italian Case-Control Study, Claudio Pelucchi, Monia Mereghetti, Renato Talamini, Eva Negri, Maurizio Montella, Valerio Ramazzotti, Silvia Franceschi, Carlo La Vecchia

Department of Public Health Scholarship and Creative Works

An increasing number of studies are focusing on the potential association between dietary folate intake and risk of various cancers (1), particularly of the colorectum and breast (2, 3). A low folate status can induce misincorporation of uracil into DNA, leading to chromosome breaks in humans and hence increasing cancer risk (4). Alcohol may increase folate requirements in the body and cause relative folate deficiencies (2). Although several findings on the relation between folate intake and ovarian cancer risk are inconsistent (5-9), recent results from two prospective …

Associations Between Perceived Family Meal Environment And Parent Intake Of Fruit,Vegetables, And Fat, Kerri N. Boutelle, Amanda Birnbaum, Leslie Lytle, David M. Murray, Mary T. Story

Department of Public Health Scholarship and Creative Works

Objective

To describe the family mealtime environment and assess associations with adult fruit, vegetable, and fat intake.

Design

Telephone survey.

Participants

A convenience sample of 277 adults in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area were recruited through 4 schools. The sample was 85% female and 70% married. The mean number of children in the household was 2.6 (range 1 to 9).

Variables Measured

Adult fruit and vegetable intake, fat intake, and perceptions of the mealtime environment.

Analysis

Descriptive and mixed-model linear regression.

Results

Participants reported that the television was frequently on during dinner meals and almost one third felt that their family …