Preventive medicine
-
Preventive medicine · May 1996
Randomized Controlled Trial Multicenter Study Clinical TrialThe effectiveness of Drug Abuse Resistance Education (project DARE): 5-year follow-up results.
This article reports the results of a 5-year, longitudinal evaluation of the effectiveness of Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE), a school-based primary drug prevention curriculum designed for introduction during the last year of elementary education. DARE is the most widely disseminated school-based prevention curriculum in the United States. ⋯ The findings of this 5-year prospective study are largely consonant with the results obtained from prior short-term evaluations of the DARE curriculum, which have reported limited effects of the program upon drug use, greater efficacy with respect to attitudes, social skills, and knowledge, but a general tendency for curriculum effects to decay over time. The results of this study underscore the need for more robust prevention programming targeted specifically at risk factors, the inclusion of booster sessions to sustain positive effects, and greater attention to interrelationships between developmental processes in adolescent substance use, individual level characteristics, and social context.
-
Preventive medicine · May 1996
Short-term all-cause mortality and its determinants in elderly male populations in Finland, The Netherlands, and Italy: the FINE Study. Finland, Italy, Netherlands Elderly Study.
This study aims at identifying determinants of all-cause mortality in elderly populations of different countries. ⋯ In these elderly men the association of traditional risk factors with all-cause mortality is reduced, U-shaped, or even inverted. This is probably due to selection due to previous mortality, to comorbidity, and to changes in homeostatic mechanisms.
-
Preventive medicine · May 1996
Changes in diet in Finland from 1972 to 1992: impact on coronary heart disease risk.
Coronary heart disease mortality has declined in Finland by 55% among men and 68% among women between 1972 and 1992. About three-quarters of this decline has been explained by changes in the main coronary risk factors, the decrease in serum cholesterol being the most important one. The aim of this study was to analyze to what extent dietary changes could explain the change in serum cholesterol. ⋯ Dietary changes seem to explain the decrease in serum cholesterol. Together with a decline in smoking among males as well as better blood pressure control they have contributed to the dramatic decline in coronary heart disease mortality in Finland.