Preventive medicine
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This study sought to examine public support for gun carrying-related policies from 2019 to 2021, a period encompassing the COVID-19 pandemic and increasing calls for racial and social justice. We conducted the National Survey of Gun Policy in January 2019 and 2021. The surveys were fielded using the NORC AmeriSpeak panel. ⋯ Support remains high among U. S. adults, including the two-thirds of gun owners, for requiring concealed carry applicants to demonstrate competence in safe and lawful gun use. Our findings in support of a more regulated approach to concealed carry are in direct contrast to state-level shifts eliminating concealed gun carrying regulations.
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Preventive medicine · Jun 2022
Racial/ethnic inequalities in cervical cancer screening in the United States: An outcome reclassification to better inform interventions and benchmarks.
In the United states (U. S.), prevailing understanding suggests significant racial/ethnic inequalities in cervical cancer screening exist. However, recent findings elsewhere in North America indicate the magnitude of these inequalities depend on the way screening is defined: lifetime screening versus up-to-date screening. ⋯ However, among women who had been screened at least once in their lifetime, an inverse association was observed between being a member of a racial/ethnic minority group and not being up-to-date with screening (e.g. PRasian vs white = 0.7, 95% CI = 0.6-0.9). Physicians and public health institutions concerned with monitoring racial/ethnic inequalities should consider adding lifetime screening as a primary benchmark, as this outcome implies different intervention targets to address inequalities and the differential burden of cervical cancer.
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Preventive medicine · Jun 2022
Wage theft and life expectancy inequities in the United States: A simulation study.
Wage theft - employers not paying workers their legally entitled wages and benefits - costs workers billions of dollars annually. We tested whether preventing wage theft could increase U. S. life expectancy and decrease inequities therein. ⋯ Among women in the lowest income decile, mean expected age at death was 0.17 years longer in the counterfactual scenario than observed (95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.11-0.22), corresponding to 528,685 (95% CI: 346,018-711,353) years extended in the total 2001-2014 age-40 population. Among men in the lowest decile, the estimates were 0.12 (95% CI: 0.07-0.17) and 380,502 (95% CI: 229,630-531,374). Moreover, among women, mean expected age at death in the counterfactual scenario increased 0.16 (95% CI: 0.06-0.27) years more among the lowest decile than among the highest decile; among men, the estimate was 0.12 (95% CI: 0.03-0.21).
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Preventive medicine · Jun 2022
Risk of respiratory, gastrointestinal, and constitutional health symptoms: A cross-sectional study of Texas adolescent and young adult nicotine and marijuana vapers.
Observational studies investigating the health consequences of vaping among youth and young adults are limited. This study aimed to describe and examine the risk for health symptoms by vape user category (never users, marijuana only, nicotine only, and dual users). Health symptoms included adverse respiratory, gastrointestinal, and constitutional problems. ⋯ Dual vapers had significantly higher odds of experiencing constitutional symptoms as compared to never users (AOR = 1.92, 95% CI: 1.10, 3.34). This study uniquely highlights the risk for gastrointestinal symptoms from vaping. Future research and clinical practice should monitor the occurrence of these symptoms and explore potential mechanisms, such as specific flavorings or chemicals, for the link between vaping and health symptoms.
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Preventive medicine · Jun 2022
Associations between illicit drug use in early adulthood and mortality: Findings from a National Birth Cohort.
Illicit drug use is known to be associated with premature mortality. Whether exposure to socioeconomic disadvantage and mental health problems in childhood help to explain this association, is unclear. We analysed data from 11,250 participants in the 1970 British Birth Cohort study. ⋯ There was, however, very little change in these associations when exposure to childhood socioeconomic disadvantage (% change in hazard ratios [HR] 0-10%) or mental health problems (0.4-11.9%) were added to the sex-adjusted model. Adding exposure to socioeconomic disadvantage (0.8-38.9%) and mental health problems (31.7-74.1%) in adulthood to the sex-adjusted model resulted in marked attenuation in HRs for all drugs. These findings imply that interventions which provide opportunities for education, employment and access to effective mental health treatments in early adulthood may help to reduce mortality among drug users.