American journal of preventive medicine
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The U. S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) makes recommendations about clinical preventive services. ⋯ The USPSTF annual report to Congress focuses on the evidence gaps of new recommendations from the past year and is sent to leading research funding agencies. The Office of Disease Prevention at NIH uses this report to help direct future funding opportunities that may address these evidence gaps. The USPSTF plays a critical role in highlighting the information needed to advance the science to optimize the use of clinical preventive services in primary care.
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Considering the joint association of neighborhood socioeconomic environment and individual-level health behaviors with health outcomes may help officials design effective disease prevention strategies. This study evaluates the joint influences of neighborhood socioeconomic environment and individual health behaviors on mortality in a cohort primarily comprising people with low individual-level SES. ⋯ Disadvantaged neighborhood socioeconomic environments are associated with increased mortality in a cohort of individuals of low SES. Positive individual-level health behaviors may help negate the adverse effect of disadvantage on mortality.
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Serving as the center of community-engaged health programs, local health departments can play a critical role in promoting community mental health. The objectives of this study were to explore the association between local health department activities and (1) preventable hospitalizations for individuals with mental disorders, and (2) associated racial disparities in preventable hospitalizations. ⋯ Improving care coordination and integration are essential to meeting the growing demands for healthcare access, while controlling costs and improving quality of service delivery. These results suggest that it will be effective to engage local health departments in the integrated behavioral health system.
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The current study aims to characterize weight-change trajectories and their concomitant associations with prospectively measured dieting and other disordered eating behaviors among initially nonoverweight adolescents during the transition to adulthood. ⋯ Although adolescents who are already overweight are most frequently targeted for weight-gain prevention and early intervention programs, results suggest that healthy lifestyle interventions could also benefit individuals who may be perceived as low risk for overweight in adulthood by nature of being nonoverweight in adolescence. Dieting and unhealthy weight-control behaviors tended to be associated with weight gain, suggesting that they are ineffective in addition to being potentially harmful.
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The U.S. spends more than any other country on health care, yet Americans have lower life expectancy than people in most industrialized countries. Recent studies suggest that lower expenditures on social policies in the U.S. may contribute to less-favorable trends in life expectancy. This study tests the hypothesis that greater social spending will be positively associated with life expectancy across the countries of the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development and that the magnitude of these associations will outweigh those between government healthcare spending and life expectancy. ⋯ The U.S. life expectancy lag could be considerably smaller if U.S. expenditures on education and incapacity programs were comparable with those in other high-income countries.