American journal of preventive medicine
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Skin cancer prevention emphasizes early adoption and practice of sun protection behaviors. Adolescence represents a high-risk period for ultraviolet radiation exposure, presenting an opportunity for intervention. The ubiquity of mobile phones among teens offers an engaging medium through which to communicate prevention messages. ⋯ A brief, SMS-based intervention affected youth skin cancer prevention behaviors and knowledge. Future research will determine whether program effects were sustained at 24 weeks and explore how sun safety parenting practices inform these effects.
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Lack of access to healthy foods may explain why residents of low-income neighborhoods and African Americans in the U.S. have high rates of obesity. The findings on where people shop and how that may influence health are mixed. However, multiple policy initiatives are underway to increase access in communities that currently lack healthy options. Few studies have simultaneously measured obesity, distance, and prices of the store used for primary food shopping. ⋯ Placing supermarkets in food deserts to improve access may not be as important as simultaneously offering better prices for healthy foods relative to junk foods, actively marketing healthy foods, and enabling consumers to resist the influence of junk food marketing.
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Experts have historically recommended better integration of public health content into medical education. Whether this adoption is associated with physician practice location has not been studied. ⋯ Findings suggest an association between perceptions of public health and community medicine instruction and practice location. Improved public health and community medicine instruction may support medical students' preparation and ability to integrate public health skills into practices in underserved settings. More research is needed to ascertain factors enabling better incorporation of public health and community medicine in medical education.
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Nonmalignant blood disorders currently affect millions of Americans, and their prevalence is expected to grow over the next several decades. This is owing to improvements in treatment leading to increased life expectancy of people with hereditary conditions, like sickle cell disease and hemophilia, but also the rising occurrence of risk factors for venous thromboembolism. ⋯ CDC is strengthening surveillance activities for blood disorders by improving and developing new methods that are tailored to best capture and monitor the epidemiologic characteristics unique to each disorder. These activities will provide a robust evidence base for public health action to improve the health of patients affected by or at risk for these disorders.
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In its decades-long history, the Division of Blood Disorders (DBD) at CDC has evolved from a patient-focused, services-supporting entity at inception, to one of the world leaders in the practice of public health to improve the lives of people at risk for or affected by nonmalignant blood disorders. The DBD's earliest public health activities consisted of working with care providers in a network of hemophilia treatment centers to provide AIDS risk reduction services to people with hemophilia. ⋯ The DBD has also developed and maintains many surveillance and registry activities beyond the Universal Data Collection system aimed at providing a better understanding of the health status, health needs, and health-related quality of life of people with nonmalignant blood disorders. The DBD has integrated applicable components of the Essential Services of Public Health successfully to promote and advance the agenda of blood disorders in public health.