Preventive medicine
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Preventive medicine · Dec 2014
Moving toward implementation: the potential for accountable care organizations and private-public partnerships to advance active neighborhood design.
The 2010 Affordable Care Act's (ACA) aims of lowering costs and improving quality of care will renew focus on preventive health strategies. This coincides with a trend in medicine to reconsider population health approaches as part of the standard curriculum. This intersection of new policy and educational climates presents a unique opportunity to reconsider traditional healthcare structures. ⋯ One example is encouraging daily physical activity via built environment interventions and programs, which is recommended by numerous groups. We highlight how nonprofit organizations in Sacramento, California have been able to leverage influence, capital, and policy to encourage design for active living, and how their work is coordinating with public health and healthcare initiatives. In conclusion, we critically examine potential barriers to the success of partnerships between ACOs and community organizations and encourage further exploration and evaluation.
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Preventive medicine · Dec 2014
Physicians' beliefs about effectiveness of cancer screening tests: a national survey of family physicians, general internists, and obstetrician-gynecologists.
To study physicians' beliefs about the effectiveness of different tests for cancer screening. ⋯ There were several substantial inconsistencies between physician beliefs in the effectiveness of cancer screening tests and the actual evidence of these tests' effectiveness which can lead both to underuse and overuse of cancer screening tests.
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Joint use policies (JUP) encourage shared facility use, usually between schools and a city or private organization, for both physical activity-related and non-physical activity-related programs. Little is known about JUP's impact on physical activity (PA). This study examined whether more specific JUPs were associated with increased PA and decreased sedentary behavior (SB) in adolescents. ⋯ JUPS may have small influences on adolescent physical activity behavior. Future longitudinal studies should be conducted to examine the impact of JUPs in conjunction with other physical activity-related policies and environmental changes to determine what impact they have on overall adolescent physical activity and sedentary behavior.
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Preventive medicine · Dec 2014
A meta-analysis of serious digital games for healthy lifestyle promotion.
Several systematic reviews have described health-promoting effects of serious games but so far no meta-analysis has been reported. This paper presents a meta-analysis of 54 serious digital game studies for healthy lifestyle promotion, in which we investigated the overall effectiveness of serious digital games on healthy lifestyle promotion outcomes and the role of theoretically and clinically important moderators. Findings showed that serious games have small positive effects on healthy lifestyles (g=0.260, 95% CI 0.148; 0.373) and their determinants (g=0.334, 95% CI 0.260; 0.407), especially for knowledge. ⋯ Serious games are best individually tailored to both socio-demographic and change need information, and benefit from a strong focus on game theories or a dual theoretical foundation in both behavioral prediction and game theories. They can be effective either as a stand-alone or multi-component programs, and appeal to populations regardless of age and gender. Given that effects of games remain heterogeneous, further explorations of which game features create larger effects are needed.
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Preventive medicine · Dec 2014
Comparative StudyA retrospective study on changes in residents' physical activities, social interactions, and neighborhood cohesion after moving to a walkable community.
This study is to examine changes in residents' physical activities, social interactions, and neighborhood cohesion after they moved to a walkable community in Austin, Texas. ⋯ This study explored potential health benefits of a walkable community in promoting physically and socially active lifestyles, especially for populations at higher risk of obesity. The initial result is promising, suggesting the need for more work to further examine the relationships between health and community design using pre-post assessments.