Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health articles from December 2002

Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health archives from December 2002

Maria Isabel Rodriguez: a lady of public health. (The JECH Gallery).
December 1, 2002... When Maria Isabel Rodriguez took the decision to study medicine at the University of El Salvador, she was called by the dean to his office where he tried to discourage her from undertaking such a "man's profession". Seven years later she...

Health information technologies: the citizen and the individual? (Speaker's Corner).
December 1, 2002... In many fields of knowledge, but especially in health domains, we are witnessing a colonisation of our societies by an alliance between generators of specialised knowledge and the panoply of technical macro-systems and communications,...

The precautionary principle and epidemiology: a contradictio in terminis? (Editorial: The Precautionary Principle).
December 1, 2002... By its nature, epidemiological science has only a limited ability to judge the need for preventative action, which is a core element of the precautionary principle The precautionary principle is gaining more and more ground as a guideline...

In the country of the blind? Impairment, disability and handicap-old fashioned concepts? (Editorial).
December 1, 2002... I read with interest the articles by Reindal and Harris since, although I accept that there is more to their papers than advocacy of models, they illustrate the dangers of the straitjacket approach to problems that using models represents. (1...

Elephant number 3: eating an elephant. (Aphorism of the Month).(public health environment)
December 1, 2002... It is said that the thing about eating an elephant is that it doesn't much matter where you start, the important thing is to know that it is indeed an elephant and that you have some sense of its size and shape, where the hard bits and the...

The ideal health minister: has an ability to reinvent themselves. (Editorials: Health Minister).(Editorial)
December 1, 2002... In November 2001, Dr Michael Wooldridge, Australia's health minister of nearly six years, retired from politics at the age of 45. In retiring early, Dr Wooldridge fulfilled his own longstanding prediction that the health portfolio would be his...

The ideal minister of (public) health: should be in a minister of public health, not a minister of health. (Editorials: Health Minister).(Editorial)
December 1, 2002... I am going to answer this question indirectly, for two reasons. Firstly, because I don't think it is possible to make a prescription for the ideal minister of health as so much depends on personal skills and the current circumstances (apart...

My ideal minister of health: will have the guts to maximise health. (Editorials: Health Minister).(Editorial)
December 1, 2002... The perfect minister of health would have to understand about health--not so much the desperate manifestations of ill health. Such a person would have to understand that a large proportion of chronic illness--at least until age 75 or...

An ideal minister of health: should work across government and be a collaborator. (Editorials: Health Minister).(Editorial)
December 1, 2002... In developed countries, health systems are complex structures that may run even in the absence of a minister of health, and at least in Italy the idea of abolishing the ministry of health and de-centralising its powers has long been considered....

The idea minister of health: should mainstream public health. (Editorials: Health Minister).(Editorial)
December 1, 2002... After more than two decades of dictatorial government, Brazil began a new democratic era in 1985. The new constitution, elaborated and promulgated in 1988, stated that "health is an universal right and a State obligation guaranteed by social...

A minister of health: should challenge trendy global corporatism. (Editorials: Health Minister).(Editorial)
December 1, 2002... Regrettably it is in the so called "democracies" of the North and South where globalisation has become the scenario for market fundamentalism and an absurd race to the bottom, in which economical and social rights have been demolished and...

The ideal minister of health: background and outlook matters, not necessarily medical qualifications. (Editorials: Health Minister).(Editorial)
December 1, 2002... Ideals exist only in fiction but shape our thinking. Over the years, only a few health ministers in India have managed to leave a lasting impression. In my personal opinion, the two best were Rajkumari Amrit Kaur and Karan Singh. Both had a...

The ideal minister of health: should be an outsider. (Editorials: Health Minister).(Editorial)
December 1, 2002... The ideal minister of health needs to be a vigorous political or social leader, above all. The minister needs to be someone who knows political realities and can push their health policies forward. The minister should selflessly devote themself...

Wanted: one ideal Canadian federal health minister (who walks on water). (Editorials: Health Minister).(Editorial)
December 1, 2002... You are excited by the challenge of Canada's interesting constitutional division of powers, in which the federal government is expected to contribute to health systems largely under the control of provincial governments, most of which will...

The ideal minister of health: should be performed and managed on stewardship, loyalty, authority, and efficiency. (Editorials: Health Minister).(Editorial)
December 1, 2002... In his effort to escape from the individualising and particularising approach of German his toricism, (1) Max Weber developed a key conceptual tool, the notion of the ideal type. An ideal type is an analytical construct that serves the...

Health and greening the city. (Commentaries: Urban Green Spaces).(response to T. Takano et al, Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, vol. 56, 2002)
December 1, 2002... Tokyo is one of the world's great new metropolitan areas; when I first visited it, it reminded me powerfully of Fritz Lang's prescient classic Metropolis. Space is at an absolute premium and conducting the normal routines of everyday life can...

Health and greening the city: new visions for health promoters. (Commentaries: Urban Green Spaces).(response to T. Takano et al, Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, vol. 56, 2002)
December 1, 2002... The paper from Takano et al, (1) outlines how the presence of a "green and pleasant land" has meaning even within an urban sprawl. Here, just perceiving that your neighbourhood is both green and pleasant was associated with increased longevity...

Health and greening the city: relation of urban planning and health. (Commentaries: Urban Green Spaces).(response to T. Takano et al, Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, vol. 56, 2002)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2002... This is an unusual paper, as the subject, the relation of open green space and health has rarely been studied. (1) It is extremely well done. In the 1960s, at a meeting of the Outdoor Recreation Resources Commission, an interdisciplinary...

Health and greening the city; setting for health promotion: the importance for an evidence base. (Commentaries: Urban Green Spaces).(community and health promotion)
December 1, 2002... For some time epidemiology has been criticised for focusing almost exclusively on individual disease risk factors. Thus Shy (1) maintains that academic epidemiology has served clinical medicine well because of its narrow biomedical perspective,...

Cancer screening. (Glossary).(Glossary)
December 1, 2002... "Screening is the systematic application of a test or inquiry, to identify individuals at sufficient risk of a specific disorder to benefit from further investigation or direct preventive action, among persons who have not sought medical...

Out of the sauna: sexual health promotion with "off street" sex workers. .
December 1, 2002... Women sex workers are very difficult to draw into mainstream healthcare services and therefore present a challenge to services. (1) Women in this client group are often invisible to service providers because of their reluctance to disclose...

Improved functional status in 16 years of follow up of middle aged and elderly men and women in north eastern Finland. .
December 1, 2002... Study objective: To investigate age, period, and cohort effects an functional status. Design: A prospective cohort study with measurements in 1981, 1990, and 1996. Setting: Three municipalities in north east Finland. Participants:...

Urban residential environments and senior citizens' longevity in megacity areas: the importance of walkable green spaces. .
December 1, 2002... Study objectives: To study the association between greenery filled public areas that are nearby a residence and easy to walk in and the longevity of senior citizens in a densely populated, developed megacity. Design: Cohort study. ...

Inequalities in mortality in shrinking and growing areas.
December 1, 2002... Modern societies are extremely mobile, yet the influence of population change in residential areas on mortality has rarely been investigated. Davey Smith et al showed that male and female mortality around the time of the 1991 census across 292...

Change in health inequalities among British civil servants: the Whitehall ll study. (Research Report).
December 1, 2002... Study objective: Despite an overall decline in mortality rates, the social gradient in mortality has increased over the past two decades. However, evidence on trends in morbidity and cardiovascular risk factors indicates that socioeconomic...

Trends in socioeconomic health inequalities in the Netherlands, 1981-1999. .
December 1, 2002... Study objective: To determine changes in socioeconomic inequalities in self reported health in both the 1980s and the 1990s in the Netherlands. Design: Analysis of trends in socioeconomic health inequalities during the last decades of the...

Neighbourhood socioeconomic context and self reported health and smoking.
December 1, 2002... Objective: Many studies have shown that poor health status and harmful health behaviour occur more frequently in deprived neighbourhoods. Most studies show modest associations between area level socioeconomic factors, the neighbourhood context,...

Socioeconomic variations in the course of stroke: unequal health outcomes, equal care?
December 1, 2002... Study objective: The aim of this paper is to quantify the socioeconomic gap in long term health outcomes after stroke and related health care utilisation, in order to evaluate whether those in need of care do actually receive appropriate levels...

Air pollution and general practice consultations for respiratory illnesses. .
December 1, 2002... Associations between air pollution and hospital admissions and mortalities have been demonstrated in many studies. (1) By contrast, few studies have reported the relation between air pollution and respiratory morbidity in general practice (GP)....

Confounding by indication in non-experimental evaluation of vaccine effectiveness: the example of prevention of influenza complications. (Theory and Methods).
December 1, 2002... Randomised allocation of vaccine or placebo is the preferred method to assess the effects of the vaccine on clinical outcomes relevant to the individual patient. In the absence of phase 3 trials using clinical end points, notably post-influenza...

The cost of questionnaire based research. .
December 1, 2002... The emotional cost to patients and researchers of questionnaire based research has recently been assessed in a study on the implementation of guidelines for women presenting with breast disorders in primary care. (1) The possible distress...

Letters.
December 1, 2002... If you have a burning desire to respond to a paper published in JECH, why not make use of our "rapid response" option? Log on to our web site (www.jech.com), find the paper that interests you, and send your response via email by clicking on...

On fairness and efficiency. The privatisation of the public income over the past millennium.(Book Review)
December 1, 2002... G Miller. The Policy Press, 2000. (Pp 470; no price stated). ISBN 1-86134-221-7 Starting out from the economic hypothesis advanced by Henry George in the 1880s--that is, the distorted balance between land, capital and labour, or rent,...

Traditional family values and substance abuse.(Book Review)
December 1, 2002... M Cuadrado, L Lieberman. Kluwer Academic Press, 2002. From the authors' point of view the book examines the proposition that the differences found in substance use and misuse behaviour among Puerto Ricans living in the United States are...

Epidemiology. An introduction.(Book Review)
December 1, 2002... K J Rothman. Oxford University Press, 2002. (Pp 223; price not stated). ISBN: 0-19-513553-9 (hardback); 0-19-513554-7 (paperback). The aim of this book is clearly stated by K J Rothman in the preface: "... to present a simple overview of...

Making sense of data. .(Book Review)
December 1, 2002... J H Abramson, Z H Abramson. Oxford University Press, 2001. (Pp 384; [pounds sterling]50.00 (hardback), [pounds sterling]29.50 (paperback). ISBN (hardback) 0-19-514524-0; (paperback): 0-19-514525-9 This is a book for learning epidemiology....

Computer programs for epidemiologists. PEPI v. 4.0.(Book Review)
December 1, 2002... J H Abramson, P M Gahlinger, (Pp 305; $59.95). Salt Lake City: Sagebrush Press, 2001. ISBN 0-9703130-2-0 The book is the manual of PEPI version 4.0, a collection of programs that includes a variety of programs for use in statistical...

Correction.(Correction Notice)
December 1, 2002... An editorial error occurred in the paper by Dr A Page and colleagues (2002;56:766-72). Both the male and female suicide rates in each category of the Gross Domestic Product variable (tables 1, 2, and 3) are not correct. The correct male and...