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Full-Text Articles in Medicine and Health Sciences

Subsidized Housing, Public Housing, And Adolescent Violence And Substance Use, Tamara Leech Dec 2012

Subsidized Housing, Public Housing, And Adolescent Violence And Substance Use, Tamara Leech

Department of Public Health Scholarship and Creative Works

This study examines the separate relationships of public housing residents and subsidized housing residence to adolescent health risk behavior. Data included 2,530 adolescents aged 14 to 19 who were children of the National the Longitudinal Study of Youth. The author uses stratified propensity methods to compare the behaviors of each group—subsidized housing residents and public housing residents—to a matched control group of teens receiving no housing assistance. The results reveal no significant relationship between public housing residence and violence, heavy alcohol/marijuana use, or other drug use. However, subsidized housing residents have significantly lower rates of violence and hard drug use, …


Lessons From The Trenches: Meeting Evaluation Challenges In School Health Education, Michael Young, George Denny, Joseph Donnelly Oct 2012

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 …


Self-Reported And Measured Hypertension Among Older Us- And Foreign-Born Adults, Kellee White, Mauricio Avedano, J Robin Moon, Benjamin Capistrant, Sze Yan Liu, M Maria Glymour Aug 2012

Self-Reported And Measured Hypertension Among Older Us- And Foreign-Born Adults, Kellee White, Mauricio Avedano, J Robin Moon, Benjamin Capistrant, Sze Yan Liu, M Maria Glymour

Department of Public Health Scholarship and Creative Works

Self-reported hypertension is frequently used for health surveillance. However, little is known about the validity of self-reported hypertension among older Americans by nativity status. This study compared self-reported and measured hypertension among older black, white, and Hispanic Americans by nativity using the 2006 and 2008 Health and Retirement Study (n = 13,451). Sensitivity and specificity of self-reported hypertension were calculated using the Seventh report of the Joint National Committee on Prevention, Detection, Evaluation, and Treatment of High Blood Pressure definition. Sensitivity was high among older blacks (88.9%), whites (82.8%), and Hispanics (84.0%), and both foreign-born (83.2%) and US-born (84.0%). Specificity …


Relationships And Context As A Means For Improving Disease Prevention And Sexual Health Messages, Lisa D. Lieberman May 2012

Relationships And Context As A Means For Improving Disease Prevention And Sexual Health Messages, Lisa D. Lieberman

Department of Public Health Scholarship and Creative Works

In many ways, the HIV epidemic changed the discourse about sex in the United States and worldwide (Ehrhardt, 1992; Everett, 1986) and continues to drive approaches to sex education. After a period of rapid growth in the late 1980s (approximately 150,000 new infections per year), by the late 1990s, HIV rates in the United States slowed to some 40,000 new infections annually (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2001), and new HIV infections continue to hover around that number. The first successful examples of behavior change that resulted in decreased HIV transmission emerged from …


Decreased Births Among Black Female Adolescents Following School Desegregation, Sze Yan Liu, Crystal D. Linkletter, Eric B. Loucks, M. Maria Glymour, Stephen L. Buka Apr 2012

Decreased Births Among Black Female Adolescents Following School Desegregation, Sze Yan Liu, Crystal D. Linkletter, Eric B. Loucks, M. Maria Glymour, Stephen L. Buka

Department of Public Health Scholarship and Creative Works

Although the socioeconomic impact of school desegregation in the U.S. has been well documented, little is known about the health consequences of this policy. The purpose of this study was to quantify the associations between school desegregation and adolescent births among black and white females. We compared the change in prevalence of adolescent births in areas that implemented school desegregation plans in the 1970s with areas that implemented school desegregation plans in other decades, using difference-in-difference methods with 1970 and 1980 Census microdata. School desegregation policy in the U.S. in the 1970s was associated with a significant reduction of 3.2 …


The Significance Of Race For Neighborhood Social Cohesion: Perceived Difficulty Of Collective Action In Majority Black Neighborhoods, Tamara Leech, Tara Hobson-Prater Mar 2012

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 Feb 2012

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 …


Impact Of The Choosing The Best Program In Communities Committed To Abstinence Education, Lisa D. Lieberman, Haiyan Su Jan 2012

Impact Of The Choosing The Best Program In Communities Committed To Abstinence Education, Lisa D. Lieberman, Haiyan Su

Department of Public Health Scholarship and Creative Works

States vary in standards for sex education, some requiring an emphasis on abstinence. Schools seek to identify curricula that reflect local community values and meet state standards. Choosing the Best (CTB), a classroom-based abstinence education curriculum, has been implemented in 75 Georgia school districts since 1995. CTB Inc., sought to determine if this popular program had an impact on abstinence attitudes, intentions, and behavior. Six Georgia public schools (1,143 ninth graders) participated in the study in 2009-2010. Four randomly assigned schools received the CTB curriculum, taught by trained CTB staff. Two control schools received their usual textbook-based abstinence lessons. Surveys …


Risky Sexual Behavior: A Race-Specific Social Consequence Of Obesity, Tamara Leech, Janice Johnson Dias Jan 2012

Risky Sexual Behavior: A Race-Specific Social Consequence Of Obesity, Tamara Leech, Janice Johnson Dias

Department of Public Health Scholarship and Creative Works

Scant attention has been given to the consequence of actual weight status for adolescents' sexual wellbeing. In this article, we investigate the race-specific connection between obesity and risky sexual behavior among adolescent girls. Propensity scores and radius matching are used to analyze a sample of 340 adolescents aged 16-17 who participated in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth Young Adult Survey in 2000 or 2002. Nearly even numbers of these participants identified as white and black (183 and 157, respectively). We find that compared to their non-obese white peers, obese white adolescent girls exhibit higher rates of multiple sex partners …