Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health articles from December 2003

Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health archives from December 2003

Bridging the gap between scientists and decision makers.(Speaker's Corner)
December 1, 2003... J Epidemiol Community Health 2003;57:918 As public health professionals, we recognise a gap between scientists and decision makers. Firstly, communication is a problem. Scientists and decision makers do not use the same language. Because...

Type I and type II errors exist in public health practice too.(Aphorism of the Month)
December 1, 2003... Epidemiologists are familiar with the concept of type I and type II errors in epidemiological research, but type I and type II errors exist in a different sense in public health practice. With the move towards multidisciplinary and...

Medical nemesis*.(Ivan Illich)
December 1, 2003... J Epidemiol Community Health 2003;57:919-922 This article was originally published in the Lancet in 1974.[dagger] It is reprinted here, as the centre of a set of articles, in memory of the death of Ivan Illich in December 2002. ...

Ivan Illich: Ivan Illich died on 2 December 2002, aged 76*.(Obituary)(Obituary)
December 1, 2003... J Epidemiol Community Health 2003;57:923-924 Ivan Illich, anti-institutional writer, was born on September 24, 1926. He died on December 2, 2002, aged 76. Radical thinker who believed that schools were bad for pupils but who retreated...

Influential women in occupational health Harriet L Hardy, MD: fighting man-made disease.(The JECH Gallery)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... 23 September 1906-13 October 1993 Country of birth: USA A physician and industrial toxicologist, Harriet Hardy was a blazing force in industrial medicine. In a landmark study in 1946, she identified beryllium as the cause of chronic...

Ivan Illich: he lived his own testimony.(Commentaries)
December 1, 2003... Scott-Samuel offers a clear and cogent memoir of Illich's contributions to our perspective on medicine in society. (1) The brevity of his memoir should not, and does not, suggest that Illich dealt merely a glancing blow to the negatives in...

Nemesis, Sisyphus, and a contribution from the medical humanities to health research: Nemesis or Sisyphus?(Commentaries)
December 1, 2003... The death last year of Ivan Illich is an opportunity for us to reflect on his controversial "Nemesis" challenge in 1974 that too much dependence on modern medicine is harmful to the health of the individual and society. (1) It followed the...

Ivan Illich and medical nemesis: the appropriation of health.(Commentaries)
December 1, 2003... In 1974 Richard Smith, the editor of the British Medical Journal, and I each attended lectures by Ivan Illich. Smith, then a medical student in Edinburgh, heard him claim that "the major threat to health in the world is modern medicine." While...

Limits to medicine. Medical nemesis: the expropriation of health; An abbreviated version of this review has been published in the BMJ.*.(Commentaries)
December 1, 2003... The closest I ever came to a religious experience was listening to Ivan Illich. A charismatic and passionate man surrounded by the fossils of the academic hierarchy in Edinburgh, he argued that "the major threat to health in the world is modern...

Economics, demography, and epidemiology: an interdisciplinary glossary; This glossary focuses on the "borderland" between demography, economic history, economic theory, and epidemiology.(Glossary)(Glossary)
December 1, 2003... J Epidemiol Community Health 2003;57:929-935 When different fields of inquiry have been separately cultivated for a while, the borderland between them often provide fertile ground for new investigations. Allyn A Young, 1924 ...

Less medicine, more health: a memoir of Ivan Illich.(The JECH Gallery)
December 1, 2003... Contemporary medicine is not comfortable with polymaths: it cannot easily handle visions that transcend its narrowly defined specialist boundaries. This is paradoxical given medicine's cultural imperialism--the ways in which it constantly...

Why are women underused in the JECH peer review process?(Short Report)
December 1, 2003... J Epidemiol Community Health 2003;57:936-937 The quality of peer review is an essential part of the scientific process (1) and nowadays its evaluation is an emergent area of research. (2) The gender perspective is however, still rarely...

User requirements and understanding of public health networks in England.(Evidence Based Public Health Policy and Practice)
December 1, 2003... J Epidemiol Community Health 2003;57:938-944 Background: The movement of public health professionals from health authorities to primary care trusts has increased their isolation and dependence on public health networks for communication....

How would schools step up public health measures to control spread of SARS?(Evidence Based Public Health Policy and Practice)
December 1, 2003... J Epidemiol Community Health 2003;57:945-949 The severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is a rapidly progressive, and sometime fatal disease with more than 1800 patients in over a dozen countries in Asia, Europe, and North America...

Tai Po Shun Tak Wong Kin Sheung Memorial School AM, Hong Kong.(The JECH Gallery)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... The school started developing the Healthy School concept in 1999, after two teachers had enrolled in the Professional Diploma Course in Health Promotion and Health Education provided by the Chinese University of Hong Kong. They had been...

How willing are parents to improve pedestrian safety in their community?(Evidence Based Public Health Policy and Practice)
December 1, 2003... J Epidemiol Community Health 2003;57:951-955 Study objective: To determine how likely parents would be to contribute to strategies to reduce pedestrian injury risks and how much they valued such interventions. Design: A single...

Community level risk factors for numbers of landmine victims in Chad and Thailand.(Evidence Based Public Health Policy and Practice)
December 1, 2003... J Epidemiol Community Health 2003;57:956-959 Study objective: To determine commonalities of landmine victim risk factors in two very different countries. Design and setting: Data on 249 communities in Chad and 530 in Thailand were...

Self ratings of health predict functional outcome and recurrence free survival after stroke.(Evidence Based Public Health Policy and Practice)
December 1, 2003... J Epidemiol Community Health 2003;57:960-966 Study objective: To measure stroke victims' self rated health (SRH) status and SRH transition, and to compare how the two are prospectively associated with disability and recurrence free...

Sex ratio at birth among Chinese babies born in Italy is lower than in China.(Short Report)
December 1, 2003... J Epidemiol Community Health 2003;57:967-968 In industrial countries sex ratio at birth (SRB) (male/female) varies between 1.07 and 1.03, with a decreasing trend in the past few decades. (1) Population statistics of the past 20 years report...

Combination of low birth weight and high adult body mass index: at what age is it established and what are its determinants?(Research Report)
December 1, 2003... J Epidemiol Community Health 2003;57:969-973 Objective: To investigate growth trajectories and predictive factors for those with low birth weight and high adult BMI. Design: Birth cohort study. Setting: England, Scotland, and...

Gender differences in socioeconomic inequality in mortality.(Research Report)
December 1, 2003... J Epidemiol Community Health 2003;57:974-980 Objectives: There is uncertainty about whether position in a socioeconomic hierarchy confers different mortality risks on men and women. The objective of this study was to conduct a systematic...

What underlies the high alcohol related mortality of the disadvantaged: high morbidity or poor survival?(Research Report)
December 1, 2003... J Epidemiol Community Health 2003;57:981-986 Study objective: To investigate whether the large socioeconomic differences in alcohol related mortality can be explained by differences in morbidity or differences in survival. Design:...

Neighbourhood composition and depressive symptoms among older Mexican Americans.(Research Report)
December 1, 2003... J Epidemiol Community Health 2003;57:987-992 Study objective: Research suggests that economically disadvantaged neighbourhoods confer an increased risk of depression to their residents. Little research has been reported about the...

Divorce and suicide risk.(Letter)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2003... If you have a burning desire to respond to a paper published in the JECH, why not make use of our "rapid response" option? Log on to our website (www.jech.com), find the paper that interests you, and send your response via email by clicking...

Ethical dimensions of health policy.(Book Reviews)(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... Ethical dimensions of health policy Edited by M Danis, C Clancy, L R Churchill. (Pp 394; [pounds sterling]37.50). Oxford University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-19-514070-2 The main aim of the book is to examine the connections between ethics...

World report on violence and health.(Book Reviews)(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... World report on violence and health E G Krug, L Dahlberg, J Mercy, A Zwi, R Lozano. (Pp 346; US$27.00). Geneva: WHO Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data, 2002. ISBN 92-4-154561-5 Violence was declared in Resolution WHA49.25 (1996)...

Law in public health practice.(Book Reviews)(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... Law in public health practice R A Goodman, M A Rothstein, R E Hoffman, W Lopez, G W Matthews. Oxford University Press, 2003. (Pp 462; price not stated). ISBN 0-19-514871-1 The aim of this book, written jointly by a variety of law and...

Case studies in forensic epidemiology.(Book Reviews)(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... Case studies in forensic epidemiology S Loue. (Pp 203; price not stated). Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, New York, 2002. ISBN 0-306-46792-5 Sane Loue's book Case studies in forensic epidemiology represents a significant turning...

ActivEpi CD ROM.(Book Reviews)(Audiovisual Review)
December 1, 2003... ActivEpi CD ROM D Kleinbaum. Springer, 2002. ISBN 0-387-14257-6 ActivEpi is a multimedia presentation of the material commonly found in an introductory epidemiology course on CD ROM. In 15 lessons, basic concepts and measures of...

Foundations for health improvement. Productive epidemiological public health research 1919-1998.(Book Reviews)(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... Foundations for health improvement. Productive epidemiological public health research 1919-1998 W W Holland. (Pp 236; price not stated). TSO, Norwich, 2002. For our young colleagues, the relevance of this book is justified by its...

Migrant health in Europe.(Notice)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... An international conference on differences in health and health care provision is to be held in Rotterdam, Netherlands, on 23-25 June 2004. Further details: Lilian Hoonhout, Department of Health Policy and Management, Erasmus MC, PO Box 1738,...

Corrections.(PostScript)(Correction Notice)
December 1, 2003... An authors' error occurred in this paper by Dr Leung and others (2003;57:857-63). Professor Charles D Spielberger and Dr Paul Yung should have been acknowledged for granting permission to use the original and Chinese version of the State-Trait...

Speaking up for the silent.(Hygieia)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... Urgent attention to the mental health needs of refugee children is required and particularly to those who travel unaccompanied. (Arch Dis Child 2002;87:366-70) There are currently over 50 million refugees in the world. Over half of that...

Recall bias and MMR.(Hygieia)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... In 1998 a paper hypothesising a causal association between the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism was seized upon by the British press and given the full tabloid treatment. The resulting furore created a great deal of negative...

Negativity follows inactivity.(Hygieia)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... A recent study suggests the benefits of persistent exercise could be much broader then previously realised. (Br J Sports Med 2002;36:360-4). The study, conducted with a series of three questionnaires concerning leisure time physical activity...

11th September triggered hate crime rise.(Hygieia)
December 1, 2003... There was a marked increase in hate related violent crime against people from or perceived to be from the Middle East in the month after the terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington DC on September 11 2001. (Injury Prevention...