Preventive medicine
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Preventive medicine · Dec 2013
Healthy Alberta Communities: impact of a three-year community-based obesity and chronic disease prevention intervention.
To assess the impact of a 3 year (2006-2009) community-based intervention for obesity and chronic disease prevention in four diverse "Healthy Alberta Communities" (HAC). ⋯ Health outcome indicators at the community level may not be sufficiently sensitive to capture changes which, over a relatively short term, would only be expected to be incremental, given that interventions were directed primarily to creating environmental conditions supportive of changes in behavioral outcomes rather than toward health outcome change directly.
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Preventive medicine · Dec 2013
Population-level evaluation of school-based interventions to prevent problem substance use among gay, lesbian and bisexual adolescents in Canada.
This study examined whether students' odds of recent substance use were lower in the presence of gay-straight alliances or explicit anti-homophobia policy that had been established at their school recently, or at least 3 years prior. ⋯ Our findings suggest that these school-based strategies (gay-straight alliances and anti-homophobia policies) to reduce homophobia and foster school inclusion may be beneficial in reducing problem alcohol use among all students, not just sexual minority students.
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Preventive medicine · Dec 2013
The impact of a population-level school food and nutrition policy on dietary intake and body weights of Canadian children.
The objective of this study is to assess population-level trends in children's dietary intake and weight status before and after the implementation of a provincial school nutrition policy in the province of Nova Scotia, Canada. ⋯ This population-level intervention research suggests a positive influence of school nutrition policies on diet quality, energy intake and healthy beverage consumption, and that more action beyond schools is needed to curb the increases in the prevalence of childhood obesity.
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Preventive medicine · Dec 2013
ReviewSmoking cessation interventions for ethnic minority groups--a systematic review of adapted interventions.
Existing smoking cessation interventions tend to be under utilized by ethnic minority groups. We sought to identify smoking cessation interventions that have been adapted to meet the needs of African-, Chinese- and South Asian-origin populations, to increase understanding of the approaches used to promote behavior change, to assess their acceptability to the target populations, and to evaluate their effectiveness. ⋯ Given the evidence of greater acceptability of adapted interventions, it may be ethically preferable to use these. There is, however, no clear evidence of the effectiveness of adapted interventions in promoting smoking cessation in ethnic minority groups.
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Preventive medicine · Dec 2013
Persistent smoking as a predictor of disability pension due to musculoskeletal diagnoses: a 23 year prospective study of Finnish twins.
To investigate whether stability or changes in smoking predict disability pension (DP) due to low back diagnoses (LBD) and musculoskeletal diagnoses (MSD) after taking familial confounding into account using a co-twin design. ⋯ Persistent smoking predicts early disability pension due to musculoskeletal diagnoses and low back diagnoses independently from numerous confounding factors, including familial effects shared by the co-twins.