Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health articles from March 2004

Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health archives from March 2004

Housing standards: a glossary of housing and health.(Glossary)
March 1, 2004... J Epidemiol Community Health 2004;58:162-168. doi: 10.1136/jech.2003.011569 This glossary has been designed to provide definitions that take account of different disciplinary and policy traditions and to consider the aspects of housing...

Slum improvement needs community organisation.(The JECH Gallery)
March 1, 2004... In improved slums in today's India, fortunate communities have safe water supplies and metalled pathways or roads. But unless there is effective community organisation in the form of neighbourhood committees and the like, the basis for...

Health impact assessment as an agent of policy change: improving the health impacts of the mayor of London's draft transport strategy.(Evidence Based Public Health Policy and Practice)
March 1, 2004... J Epidemiol Community Health 2004;58:169-174. doi: 10.1136/jech.2003.012385 Objective: To increase the positive and mitigate the negative health impacts of the mayor's draft transport strategy for London. Design: A rapid prospective...

The politics of preventable deaths: local spending, income inequality, and premature mortality in US cities.(Evidence Based Public Health Policy and Practice)
March 1, 2004... J Epidemiol Community Health 2004;58:175-179. doi: 10.1136/jech.2003.008672 Objective: To examine the association between (1) local political party, (2) urban policies, measured by spending on local programmes, and (3) income inequality...

How did general practitioners protect themselves, their family, and staff during the SARS epidemic in Hong Kong?(Evidence Based Public Health Policy and Practice)
March 1, 2004... J Epidemiol Community Health 2004;58:180-185. doi: 10.1136/jech.2003.015594 Context: Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is a newly emerging infectious disease and how the frontline community doctors respond to it is not known. ...

Influential women in occupational health Eula Bingham, PhD--Bridging Academia and Government.(The JECH Gallery)
March 1, 2004... July 1929-, Country of birth: USA A world class environmental scientist, Eula Bingham is a major contributor to public health through science based advocacy and regulatory toxicology. During her tenure as head of the US Occupational Safety...

Modelling potential responses to severe acute respiratory syndrome in Japan: the role of initial attack size, precaution, and quarantine.(Evidence Based Public Health Policy and Practice)
March 1, 2004... J Epidemiol Community Health 2004;58:186-191. doi: 10.1136/jech.2003.014894 Background: There has been an outbreak of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) worldwide. With the use of detailed epidemiological data from other...

Linking perceptions of neighbourhood to health in Hamilton, Canada.(Research Report)
March 1, 2004... J Epidemiol Community Health 2004;58:192-198. doi: 10.1136/jech.2003.014308 Study objective: To investigate the association between perceptions of neighbourhood physical and social characteristics and three health outcomes (self assessed...

Doing health: reclaiming the "H" word.(Aphorism of the Month)
March 1, 2004... Mark Twain famously said that he had been writing prose for 20 years before he knew that that was what he was doing. It is the same with health. Health is created and lost in everyday life by individuals, families, and organisations in the...

The role of individual and contextual socioeconomic circumstances on mortality: analysis of time variations in a city of north west Italy.(Research Report)
March 1, 2004... J Epidemiol Community Health 2004;58:199-207. doi: 10.1136/jech.2003.014928 Study objective: To evaluate the independent and mutual effects of neighbourhood deprivation and of individual socioeconomic conditions on mortality and to assess...

A multilevel analysis of socioeconomic (small area) differences in household food purchasing behaviour.(Research Report)
March 1, 2004... J Epidemiol Community Health 2004;58:208-215. doi: 10.1136/jech.2003.011031 Study objective: To examine the association between area and individual level socioeconomic status (SES) and food purchasing behaviour. Design: The sample...

Housing and health in Germany.(Research Report)
March 1, 2004... J Epidemiol Community Health 2004;58:216-222. doi: 10.1136/jech.2003.012781 Study objectives: To examine the association between housing tenure and self rated health, controlling for socioeconomic measures and testing the mediating effects...

Inequalities in health are often only a matter of yards apart.(The JECH Gallery)
March 1, 2004... In urban India fortunate middle class areas may have water closet latrines such as these. Meanwhile, slum dwellers living yards away may depend on the roadside or any nearby piece of waste land for defecation. Sanitation remains a top priority...

Neighbourhoods and homicide mortality: an analysis of race/ethnic differences.(Research Report)
March 1, 2004... J Epidemiol Community Health 2004;58:223-230. doi: 10.1136/jech.2003.011874 Objective: To examine whether measures of neighbourhood economic deprivation, social disorganisation, and acculturation explain homicide mortality differentials...

Healthy cities shows the way to improve urban public health.(The JECH Gallery)
March 1, 2004... Over half the world's population now lives in large towns and cities, some of vast size. For many families the daily reality is of slum dwelling such as this shanty town in India where open sewers, uncollected rubbish, and roaming livestock...

"Unequal opportunity": neighbourhood disadvantage and the chance to buy illegal drugs.(Research Report)
March 1, 2004... J Epidemiol Community Health 2004;58:231-237. doi: 10.1136/jech.2003.007575 Study objectives: This study investigates whether subgroups of people living in disadvantaged neighbourhoods may be more likely to come into contact with drug...

Contribution of drinking patterns to differences in rates of alcohol related problems between three urban populations.(Research Report)
March 1, 2004... J Epidemiol Community Health 2004;58:238-242. doi: 10.1136/jech.2003.011825 Objectives: To examine, on empirical data, whether drinking patterns, in addition to overall alcohol consumption, contribute to differences in rates of alcohol...

Evaluation of methodologies for small area life expectancy estimation.(Theory and Methods)
March 1, 2004... J Epidemiol Community Health 2004;58:243-249. doi: 10.1136/jech.2003.009654 Study objective: To evaluate methods for calculating life expectancy in small areas, for example, English electral wards. Design: The Monte Carlo method was...

The index of Multiple Deprivation 2000 and accessibility effects on health.(Theory and Methods)
March 1, 2004... J Epidemiol Community Health 2004;58:250-257. doi: 10.1136/jech.2003.013011 Study objective: To investigate whether the Index of Multiple Deprivation 2000 (IMD) is more strongly related to inequalities in health in rural areas than...

Bullying, workers' health, and labour instability.(Letter)
March 1, 2004... 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...

Tackling health inequalities since the Acheson Inquiry.(Book Review)
March 1, 2004... Tackling health inequalities since the Acheson Inquiry E Exworthy, M Stuart, D Blane, M Marmot. (Pp 68; [pounds sterling]14.95). The Policy Press, Bristol, 2003. ISBN 1-86134-504-6 A decade ago, the then British government shunned the...

Correction.(PostScript)(Correction Notice)
March 1, 2004... doi: 10.1136/jech.2003.009506corr1 An authors' error occurred in this paper by Dr Sundquist and others (2004;58:71-7). Page 71, left column, second paragraph, line 8, a reference should be inserted Merlo J, Lynch J W, Yang M, et al....

Pneumocystis infection of HIV infected individuals in winter.(Hygieia)
March 1, 2004... Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP), a major cause of morbidity and mortality in HIV infected individuals, is more likely to strike HIV-1 infected people in the cold winter months. The authors examined data from the Chelsea and Westminster HIV...

Service improvement needed to stop syphilis.(Hygieia)
March 1, 2004... Improvements in genitourinary medicine (GUM) services are urgently required in Manchester, UK, if the area is to effectively control the return of syphilis. The authors created a form to record epidemiological data, which was sent to each of...

Community factors in sexual infection are important too.(Hygieia)
March 1, 2004... HIV research often focuses on individual risk factors, but community characteristics can also play an important part. Researchers used a variety of data sources to examine the association between individual and community risk factors with HIV...

Warning on short acting [beta] agonist for asthma treatment.(Hygieia)
March 1, 2004... Excessive use of short acting [beta] agonists is associated with an increased risk of asthma death. Analysis of data on the General Practice Research Database investigates the effects of respiratory medications on risk of asthma death. It shows...

Better off children less likely to be labelled asthmatic despite taking medication.(Hygieia)
March 1, 2004... Health inequalities between rich and poor are well reported. But what is the precise mechanism of association? Some have suggested diagnostic accuracy plays a part. Researchers in Sheffield found that the prevalence and severity of asthma in...

Raising the profile of ankylosing spondylitis.(Hygieia)
March 1, 2004... The cmployment prospects of patients with ankylosing spondylitis (AS) is reduced compared with that of the general Dutch population. A cross sectional mail survey assessed the labour market position of 658 patients in relation to disease...

Heart disease in Europe--the widening gap between East and West.(Hygieia)
March 1, 2004... Mortality from coronary heart disease (CHD) and cerebrovascular disease (CVD) has continued to fall in Western Europe, USA, and Japan. In most of Eastern Europe, mortality increased up to the late 1990s. Between 1995 and 1998, Ukraine had the...

Consistency in statin prescribing needed.(Hygieia)
March 1, 2004... Despite the clear efficacy of statin treatment, reports have suggested that lipid lowering drugs are not being widely used in Britain. The results of a recent study reiterate this. Whincup et al carried out a cross sectional survey within a...