Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health articles from August 2002

Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health archives from August 2002

Communities and sustaining change. (Aphorism of the Month).(Brief Article)
August 1, 2002... Communities and sustaining change. (Aphorism of the month) John R Ashton The notion of sustaining change as part of communities owning the change process is well captured in an anonymous Chinese poem: "Go to the people live...

Do we need them? Working with traditional birth attendants in the Andes. (The Jech Gallery).(Brief Article)
August 1, 2002... Fifty two per cent of deliveries at Ayacucho department (south central Peruvian Andes) occur at home, and at rural settings this number is expected to be higher. The main actor involved with pregnant women in those communities are the...

Power, politics, and social class. (Speaker's Corner).(Brief Article)
August 1, 2002... The recent growth of health disparities scholarship has not been accompanied by a parallel development in its key construct: social class. Rather, new research has kept the "social" in social inequalities to a minimum. With few exceptions, (1)...

An evaluation of clinical governance in the public health departments of the West Midlands Region. (Public health Policy and Practice).
August 1, 2002... Study objectives: (1) To evaluate the development of clinical governance within public health departments. (2) To assess two models for examining clinical governance in public health departments. Design: Semi-structured interviews carried...

Employment security and health. (Public Health Policy and Practice).
August 1, 2002... Objective: To study the relation of contractual and perceived employment security to employee health. Design: Cross sectional survey. Setting: Municipal sector employees in eight Finnish towns. Participants: 5981 employees with a...

Unexplained illness among injecting drug users in Dublin: a case-control study. (Short Report).
August 1, 2002... An outbreak of unexplained illness among heroin users was reported in May 2000 in Dublin. (1) Between 29 April and 26 June 2000, 22 cases were identified, with eight deaths. This occurred in association with similar outbreaks in the UK,...

Time of day variation in rates of obstetric intervention to assist in vaginal delivery. (Short Report).
August 1, 2002... The frequency of use of commonly performed obstetric procedures to assist in vaginal delivery has been shown to vary according to characteristics of both the patient and provider, independently of clinical indications for intervention, (1-5)...

Transitions to informal care in Great Britain during the 1990s. (Public Health Policy and Practice).
August 1, 2002... Objectives: To estimate annual changes and trends in the population of informal corers and to investigate transitions to caregiving by age, gender, locus of care, and level of involvement. Design: Longitudinal analysis of data from the...

A glossary for multilevel analysis. (Glossary).
August 1, 2002... Multilevel analysis has recently emerged as a useful analytical technique in several fields, including public health and epidemiology. This glossary defines key concepts and terms used in multilevel analysis. Multilevel analysis,...

Assessing socioeconomic status in adolescents: the validity of a home affluence scale. (Theory and Methods).
August 1, 2002... Study objective: To examine the completion rate, internal reliability, and external validity of a home affluence scale based on adolescents' reports of material circumstances in the home as a measure of family socioeconomic status. Design:...

Impact numbers in health policy decisions. (Theory and Methods).
August 1, 2002... Objective: To outline the major methodological issues appropriate to the use of the population impact number (PIN) and the disease impact number (DIN) in health policy decision making. Design: Review of literature and calculation of PIN and...

Impact numbers: measures of risk factor impact on the whole population from case-control and cohort studies. (Theory and Methods).
August 1, 2002... Objective: To describe new measures of risk from case-control and cohort studies, which are simple to understand and relate to numbers of the population at risk. Design: Theoretical development of new measures of risk. Setting: Review...

A health impact assessment model for environmental changes attributable to development projects. (Theory and Methods).
August 1, 2002... Study objective: European Union legislation requires large industrial and civil development projects to undergo environmental impact assessment. The study objective was to identify environmental health risk estimates for these developments from...

Climate variability and Ross River virus transmission. (Research Report).(Statistical Data Included)
August 1, 2002... Objectives: (1) To examine the feasibility to link climate data with monthly incidence of Ross River virus (RRv). (2) To assess the impact of climate variability on the RRv transmission. Design: An ecological time series analysis was...

Changing sex ratio in Iran, 1976-2000. (Short Report).(Brief Article)
August 1, 2002... Sex ratio--that is, the ratio of male to total live births--is a subject of scientific interest but little is known about the factors that affect the sex ratio of humans. Many demographic and environmental factors have been suggested to affect...

Early unemployment can contribute to adult health problems: results from a longitudinal study of school leavers. (Research Report).(Statistical Data Included)
August 1, 2002... Study objective: To investigate the long term effects of early unemployment (a total of mare than half a year of unemployment between the ages of 16 and 21) on health behaviour and psychological and somatic symptoms. Design: A 14 year...

Depression and falls among community dwelling elderly people: a search for common risk factors. (Research Report).(Statistical Data Included)
August 1, 2002... Study objectives: Depression and falls are two common conditions that impair the health of older people. Both are relatively underdiagnosed and undertreated problems in primary care. The study objective was to investigate whether there was a...

Socioeconomic status of very small areas and stroke incidence in the Netherlands. (Research Report).(Statistical Data Included)
August 1, 2002... Objective: To examine whether characteristics of very small living areas can be used to predict disease incidence and to use these characteristics to assess socioeconomic differences in stroke incidence in the Netherlands. Design:...