Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health articles from February 2002

Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health archives from February 2002

Postmodern public health. (In this Issue).(Brief Article)(Editorial)
February 1, 2002... Public health challenges are complex, programmatic and context dependent, and so are the interventions required to address them and the research methods sufficient to the task of throwing light on the most effective solutions. It has been said...

Community amenities: A neglected health resource? (The JECH Gallery).(Brief Article)
February 1, 2002... Thomson, H. This picture shows residents demonstrating against a local swimming pool closure in an area of Glasgow where the chance of dying before the age of 65 is 2.3 times the British average. The pool, built in 1914, is being closed...

Towards an ecology minded public health? (Speaker's Corner).(Brief Article)
February 1, 2002... Manuel, Alberto, Torres Augusto, Carlos, Monteiro Public health is about making people healthier but people's health greatly depends on the conditions they live in. Our environment is, to an unusually large extent, a human byproduct,...

The evidence debate: Evaluating evidence for public health interventions. (Editorial).(Editorial)
February 1, 2002... D V McQueen This issue presents an excellent article from Australia addressing the criteria for evaluating evidence for public health interventions. (1) This article should be read within the context of the evidence debate that occupied...

Health economic evaluation: A glossary is presented on terms of health economic evaluation. Definitions are suggested for the more common concepts and terms. (Glossary).
February 1, 2002... It is well established that economics has an important part to play in the evaluation of health and health care interventions. Many books and papers have been written describing the methods of health economic evaluation. (1 2) Despite this,...

Doing things together: Adolescent health and family rituals. (Research Report).
February 1, 2002... Study objectives: (1) To describe the union and life cycle of family rituals, such as specific habits of sharing daily meals, special events or other family activities, and (2) to analyse the relation between the practice of family rituals and...

Stress and suicide in the nurses' health study. (Research Report).
February 1, 2002... Study objectives: Although stress is thought to be a risk factor for suicide, most research has been retrospective or has focused on attempted suicides or suicide ideation. This study examined prospectively the associations between self...

Sexual intercourse and risk of ischaemic stroke and coronary heart disease: The caerphilly study. (Research Report).(Caerphilly, South Wales)
February 1, 2002... Objective: To examine the relation between frequency of sexual intercourse and risk of ischaemic stroke and coronary heart disease. Design: Cohort study with 20 year follow up. Setting: The town of Caerphilly, South Wales and five...

Factors associated with HIV infection are not the same for all women. (Research Report).
February 1, 2002... Study objectives: To determine if factors associated with HIV infection vary between subpopulations of women resident in Great Britain. Design: Case-control analyses on already existing datasets. Setting: Great Britain. ...

Socioeconomic differences in children's and adolescents' hospital admissions in Germany: A report based on health insurance data on selected diagnostic categories. (Research Report).
February 1, 2002... Study objective: The extent of social inequalities in children's hospitalisation risks was examined in terms of socioeconomic status and parents' nationality. This was considered in terms of inpatient treatment attributable to a number of...

Telephone reminders are a cost effective way to improve responses in postal health surveys. (Theory and Methods).(Statistical Data Included)
February 1, 2002... Study objective: To assess the effectiveness of a telephone reminder in increasing responses to postal surveys and to calculate the differential costs per completed questionnaire. Design: Randomised controlled trial. Setting:...

Criteria for evaluating evidence on public health interventions. (Theory and Methods).
February 1, 2002... Public health interventions tend to be complex, programmatic, and context dependent. The evidence for their effectiveness must be sufficiently comprehensive to encompass that complexity. This paper asks whether and to what extent evaluative...

How to measure the burden of mortality? (Theory and Methods).(Statistical Data Included)
February 1, 2002... Objectives: To explore various methods to quantity the burden of mortality, with a special interest for the more recent method at the core of calculations of disability adjusted life years (DALY). Design: Various methods calculating the age...

A framework for the evidence base to support health impact assessment. (Public Health Policy and Practice).
February 1, 2002... Objective: To introduce a conceptual structure that can be used to organise the evidence base for Health Impact Assessment (HIA). Background: HIA can be used to judge the potential health effects of a policy, programme or project on a...

Multilevel modelling of aircraft noise on performance tests in schools around heathrow airport London. (Public Health Policy and Practice).(Statistical Data Included)
February 1, 2002... Study objective: To examine the effects of chronic exposure to aircraft noise on children's school performance taking into account social class and school characteristics. Design: This is a cross sectional study using the National...

Getting insurance after genetic screening on familial hypercholesterolaemia; the need to educate both insurers and the public to increase adherence to national guidelines in the Netherlands. (Public Health Policy and Practice).(Statistical Data Included)
February 1, 2002... Heterozygous familial hypercholesterolaemia (FH) is a common autosomal dominant inherited metabolic disease with a prevalence of 1 in 500 in most Western countries. (1-3) People with FH experience an increased risk for coronary artery disease...

Educational campaign versus malathion spraying for the control of Aedes aegypti in Colima, Mexico. (Public Health Policy and Practice).(Statistical Data Included)
February 1, 2002... Objective: To evaluate the effect of an educational campaign far reducing the breeding places of Aedes aegypti, the principal vector of dengue; and to compare its effects with the ones obtained by spraying of malathion at ultralow volume. ...

Effectiveness of highly active antiretroviral therapy among HIV-1 infected women. (Public Health Policy and Practice).(Statistical Data Included)
February 1, 2002... Study objective: To describe the impact of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) on mortality, morbidity, and markers of HIV disease progression in HIV infected women. Design: Data collected from the Women's Interagency HIV Study, a...

Pharmacoepidemiology: An introduction. 3rd edn. (Book review).
February 1, 2002... A G Hartzema, M Porta, H H Tilson, editors. (Pp 670; price not stated.) Cincinnati: Harvey Whitney Books, 1998. ISBN 0-929375-18-1. This book, when initially published in 1988, was intended as an overview of pharmacoepidemiology. Ten years...

The Eurostroke project. (In this Issue).(stroke prevention)
February 1, 2002... Stroke is the third leading cause of death in the Western societies. In addition, stroke is a major cause for morbidity and loss of quality of life. For the United States estimates indicate more than 700 000 incident strokes each year and...

The Eurostroke cohorts: A short description and data analytical approach. (Research Report).(stroke prevention)
February 1, 2002... This paper describes the design and methodology of the participating cohorts in the EUROSTROKE project. Information is given about the cohort sampling, its size, the follow up procedures and event classification. information is also given about...

Left ventricular hypertrophy and risk of fatal and non-fatal stroke. Eurostroke: A collaborative study among research centres in Europe. (Research Report).(Statistical Data Included)
February 1, 2002... Background: This study investigated the association between electrocardiographically assessed left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH] and fatal, non-fatal, haemorrhagic and ischaemic stroke in four European cohorts participating in EUROSTROKE. ...

Level of fibrinogen and risk of fatal and non-fatal stroke. Eurostroke: A collaborative study among research centres in Europe. (Research Report).(Statistical Data Included)
February 1, 2002... Background: It is well established that raised levels of fibrinogen increase the risk of coronary heart disease. For stroke, however, data are much more limited and restricted to overall stroke. This study investigated the association between...

Total and HDL cholesterol and risk of stroke. Eurostroke: A collaborative study among research centres in Europe. (Research Report).(Statistical Data Included)
February 1, 2002... Background: Controversy remains on the relation between serum lipids levels and stroke risk. This paper investigated the association of total and HDL cholesterol level to fatal and non-fatal, and haemorrhagic and ischaemic stroke in four...

[gamma]-Glutamyltransferase and risk of stroke: The Eurostroke project. (Research Report).(Statistical Data Included)
February 1, 2002... Background: Alcohol consumption has been implicated in the aetiology of stroke. As data on alcohol consumption obtained by questionnaire are susceptible to missclassification, this study evaluated the assocation between...

Prediction of stroke in the general population in Europe (Eurostroke): Is there a role for fibrinogen and electrocardiography? (Research Report).
February 1, 2002... Background: To decide whether a person with certain characteristics should be given any kind of intervention to prevent a cardiovascular event, it would be helpful to classify subjects in low, medium and high risk categories. The study...