Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health articles from March 2002

Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health archives from March 2002

The Jech Gallery: Culturally appropriate birth services within health facilities.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... For many years Peruvian Andean women used to birth their babies at home. The continuous rejection of care at health facilities is partially based on important cultural beliefs. Some of them are the exposure of female genitals in the...

Speaker's corner: From North Sea to Black Sea: Progress towards common public health practice.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... The European Commission (EC) has noted the need for public health protection in central and east European countries, which aspire to European Union (EU) membership, to approximate towards west European standards, prior to EU enlargement. In...

Validation of self reported smoking: The use of cotinine as a biomarker for exposure to smoking. (Smoking).
March 1, 2002... Self reported smoking status has been widely used to assess detrimental health effects of smoking and to orient counselling and other preventive interventions. Self reporting, however, can be unreliable if the subject is under pressure because...

Income inequality and economic residential segregation: The relation between income inequality and economic residential segregation is undoubtedly causal. (Income Inequality).
March 1, 2002... It is now widely acknowledged that the surge in income inequality in the United States since the mid-1970s was accompanied by a sharp increase in the spatial concentration of poverty. Between 1970 and 1990, the percentage of urban poor...

Validation of self reported smoking by serum cotinine measurement in a community-based study. (Theory and Methods).(Statistical Data Included)
March 1, 2002... Study objective: The validity of self reported smoking in population surveys remains an important question. An associated question is what would be the value of measuring serum cotinine concentrations in such surveys to obtain validated smoking...

Is the link between alcohol and cardiovascular death among young Russian men attributable to misclassification of acute alcohol intoxication? Evidence from the city of Izhevsk. (Theory and Methods).(Statistical Data Included)
March 1, 2002... Background: Research on the aetiology of sudden cardiac death among young men in Russia strongly suggests an association with binge drinking. However, the possibility remains that such deaths are misclassified as being attributable to...

Collecting information on marital status: A methodological note. (Short Report).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... Marital status is often probed in epidemiological, public health, and social surveys, and has been shown to be associated with various health outcomes. However, in the past 25 years there has been a trend towards cohabitation, and higher rates...

On the world health organisation's measurement of health inequalities. (Research Report).
March 1, 2002... Study objective: To review the World Health Organisation's methodological approach for the purpose of measuring health inequalities presented in the WHR 2000 and reference papers. Main findings: Recommending that health inequalities be...

Inequality, residential segregation by income, and mortality in US cities. (Research Report).(Statistical Data Included)
March 1, 2002... Study objective: This study was designed to discover whether the relation between income inequality and population death rates within the United States was mediated by the degree of residential segregation between rich and poor. Design:...

Class differences in the social consequences of illness? (Research Report).(Statistical Data Included)
March 1, 2002... Study objective: To investigate adverse social consequences of limiting longstanding illness and the modifying effect of socioeconomic position on these consequences. Design: Cohort study on the panel within the annual Swedish Survey of...

Neighbourhood level versus individual level correlates of women's body dissatisfaction: Toward a multilevel understanding of the role of affluence. (Research Report).
March 1, 2002... Study objective: This study examined the prevalence of body dissatisfaction as a function of individual level and neighbourhood level indicators of affluence. Participants and setting: A subset of data from a larger random digit dialling...

Socioeconomic differences in children's use of physician services in the Nordic countries. (Research Report).
March 1, 2002... Objective: To assess the relation between socioeconomic factors and the use of physician services among children and whether variations of the level of co-payment are correlated with different levels of inequalities in health services use. ...

Long term mortality trends behind low life expectancy of Danish women. (Research Report).
March 1, 2002... Study objective: To examine the long time mortality trends of women in Denmark. Design: Age-period-cohort analysis. Setting: To search for possible causes we analysed mortality rates for all Danish women and men aged 40-84 during...

Does a higher number of siblings protect against the development of allergy and asthma? A review. (Research Report).
March 1, 2002... Study objective: To review the "protective" effects of having a higher number of siblings for the risk of atopic eczema, asthma wheezing, hay fever, and allergic sensitisation. Method: Review of the literature (Medline since 1965 and...

Height, body mass index, and survival in men with coronary disease: follow up of the diet and reinfarction trial (DART). (Short Report).
March 1, 2002... Taller people have a lower risk of coronary death and death from all causes, (1) but there are few data on the association between height and survival in those with coronary disease. Similarly being either underweight or obese is associated...

Balkans briefing number 7. Pristina hospital: Under new management. (Public Health Policy and Practice).
March 1, 2002... This is the seventh paper in a series on the consequences for public health of the conflict in the Balkans. It describes the state of the hospital sevices in Pristina after the cease fire in June 1999 and the subsequent reconstruction...

Provision of services to asylum seekers. Are there lessons from the experience with Kosovan refugees? (Public Health Policy and Practice).
March 1, 2002... Arrangements that were made to receive and support Kosovan refugees in the United Kingdom should be applied to asylum seekers arriving in the country. Similar social circumstances of immigrants may trigger dissimilar political responses...

Smoking in young adolescents: an approach with multilevel discrete choice models. (Public Health Policy and Practice).
March 1, 2002... Study objective: To understand the context for tobacco smoking in young adolescents, estimating the effects of individual, family, social, and school related factors. Design: Cross sectional analysis performed by multilevel logistic...

Differential effect of socioeconomic status on rates of invasive coronary procedures across the public and private sectors in Queensland, Australia. (Short Report).
March 1, 2002... Free access to health care for all Australians is enshrined in the publicly funded Medicare programme, which coexists with and subsidises the private sector. Information about equitable access under this system is scarce. In other countries...

Re-emerging syphilis in gay men: a case-control study of behavioural risk factors and HIV status. (Short Report).
March 1, 2002... Over the later half of the 20th century levels of syphilis dropped dramatic ally in western European countries. Between 1990 and 1998, an area such as Greater Manchester in the UK (population, 2.7 million) reported fewer than 10 cases per year....

Suicide in doctors. (Letters to the Editor).(Brief Article)(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2002... Hawton and colleagues (1) found that, relative to the general population, NHS female doctors had about twice the expected suicide rate, whereas NHS male doctors had about half the expected suicide rate. They concluded that, "the excess risk of...

Abortion and breast cancer. (Letters to the Editor).(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2002... Goldacre et al (1) use an impressively large database (28 616 cases and 325 456 controls) and an observed/expected ratio significantly below unity (0.83; 95% CI 0.74 to 0.93) in their record linkage study, to conclude that induced abortion...

Description of a fitness to travel health assessment evaluation tool for displaced Albanian Kosovars in the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia. (Letters to the editor).(Brief Article)(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2002... During the 1999 conflict in Kosovo, an estimated 850 000 people were displaced from Kosovo. (1) Many thousands of these people arrived in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM). As the physical and political pressures mounted within...

Needs assessment in public health. A practical guide for students and professionals. (BOOK REVIEWS).
March 1, 2002... D J Peterson, G R Alexander. (Pp 139; $37.50). Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, New York, 2001. ISBN 0-306-46530-2. An excellent overview of the principles and application of needs assessment for the development and implementation of...

Decision-making in environmental health. (Book Reviews).
March 1, 2002... Edited by C Corvalan, D Briggs, G Zielhuis G. (Pp 278; price not stated). E & FN Span, 2000. ISBN 0-419-25940-6. Published on behalf of WHO, this book considers the use of statistical information on health and the environment in the...

El control de las enfermedades transmisibles, 17th edn. (Book Reviews).
March 1, 2002... Edited by J Chin. (Pp 748; price not stated). Informe Oficial de la Asociacion Americana de Salud Publica (American Public Health Association). Organization Panamericana de la Salud. Publicacion Cientifica y Tecnica no 581, 2001. ISBN...