American journal of preventive medicine
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Randomized Controlled Trial Multicenter Study
Family history assessment: impact on disease risk perceptions.
Family Healthware™, a tool developed by the CDC, is a self-administered web-based family history tool that assesses familial risk for six diseases (coronary heart disease; stroke; diabetes; and colon, breast, and ovarian cancers) and provides personalized prevention messages based on risk. The Family Healthware Impact Trial (FHITr) set out to examine the clinical utility of presenting personalized preventive messages tailored to family history risk for improving health behaviors. ⋯ Family Healthware was effective at increasing disease risk perceptions, particularly for metabolic conditions, among those who underestimated their risk. Results from this study also demonstrate the relatively resistant nature of risk perceptions.
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Dog ownership is emerging as an important correlate of sufficient physical activity and therefore has the potential to positively affect a portion of the population. A growing body of literature indicates that dog-walking contributes to increased physical activity. However, most of the previous studies have been conducted in Australia or the U.S. and have sampled from the general adult population. ⋯ Use of dog-walking may be a potentially viable means of intervention for increasing walking and overall physical activity in older Japanese adults.
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With nearly 49,000 authorized retailers nationwide, a policy change that added fruits and vegetables (FV) to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) food packages in 2009 had the potential to expand neighborhood FV availability. ⋯ Expansion of WIC foods was associated with small positive externalities on the food environment. Larger subsidies to create more demand and more-substantial stocking requirements for retailers may yield significantly larger improvements and thus warrant further investigation. Approaches targeting rural, low-income, and racial/ethnic minority neighborhoods also may be needed.
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Effective strategies are needed to address obesity, particularly among minority and low-income individuals. ⋯ Despite baseline differences in healthy food purchases, a simple color-coded labeling and choice architecture intervention improved food and beverage choices among employees from all racial and socioeconomic backgrounds.
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Comparative Study
School wellness policies: effects of using standard templates.
Public school policies related to physical activity and nutrition recently have become the focal point for policymakers to evaluate the effect of regulations on the childhood obesity epidemic. State school board associations have begun to provide school districts templates for wellness policies, and little research exists that evaluates the effect of a template on the strength and comprehensiveness of these policies. ⋯ In this sample, locally developed policies were stronger than template-based policies. If replicated in large studies, these findings suggest that further research is needed about how best to support schools that wish to develop school wellness policies.