Bmc Public Health
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Multimorbidity is increasingly recognized as a major public health challenge of modern societies. However, knowledge about the size of the population suffering from multimorbidity and the type of multimorbidity is scarce. The objective of this study was to present an overview of the prevalence of multimorbidity and comorbidity of chronic diseases in the Dutch population and to explore disease clustering and common comorbidities. ⋯ Multimorbidity is common at all ages though increasing with age, with over two-thirds of those with chronic diseases and aged 55 years and older being recorded with multimorbidity. Comorbidity encompassed many different combinations of chronic diseases. Given the ageing population, multimorbidity and its consequences should be taken into account in the organization of care in order to avoid fragmented care, in medical research and healthcare policy.
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While Italy has implemented some tobacco control policies over the last few decades, which resulted in a decreased smoking prevalence, there is still considerable scope to strengthen tobacco control policies consistent with the World Health Organization (WHO) policy guidelines. The present study aims to evaluate the effect of past and project the effect of future tobacco control policies on smoking prevalence and associated premature mortality in Italy. ⋯ Besides presenting the benefits of a comprehensive tobacco control strategy, the model helps identify information gaps in surveillance and evaluation schemes that will promote the effectiveness of future tobacco control policy in Italy.
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There are an increasing number of children in Australia growing up with same-sex attracted parents. Although children from same-sex parent families do in general perform well on many psychosocial measures recent research is beginning to consider some small but significant differences when these children are compared with children from other family backgrounds. In particular studies suggest that there is an association between the stigma that same-sex parent families experience and child wellbeing. Research to date lacks a holistic view with the complete physical, mental and social wellbeing of children not yet addressed. In addition, most studies have focused only on families with lesbian parents and have studied only small numbers of children. ⋯ ACHESS aims to be the largest study of its kind and will for the first time produce a detailed quantitative analysis of Australian children with same-sex attracted parents. By inviting participants to take part in further research it will also establish a valuable cohort of children, and their families, to launch future waves of research that will help us better understand the health and wellbeing of children with same-sex attracted parents.
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Prior longitudinal studies have shown high cumulative dating violence exposure rates among U.S adolescents, with 36 percent of males and 44 percent to 88 percent of females experiencing victimization across adolescence/young adulthood. Despite promising information characterizing adolescents' dating violence experiences longitudinally, prior studies tended to concentrate on physical and sexual types of violence only, and did not report information on the number of times dating violence was experienced across multiple abusive partners. We used a method similar to the timeline follow-back interview to query adolescents about dating violence victimization from age 13 to 19-including dating violence types (physical, sexual, and psychological), frequency, age at first occurrence, and number of abusive partners. ⋯ Our study adds information to a substantial, but still growing, body of literature about dating violence frequency, age of occurrence, and number of abusive partners among adolescents.
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Studies on the effects of tuberculosis on a patient's quality of life (QOL) are scant. The objective of this study was to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Taiwan short version of the World Health Organization Quality of Life (WHOQOL-BREF) questionnaire using patients with tuberculosis in Taiwan and healthy referents. ⋯ Psychometric evaluation of the Taiwan short version of the WHOQOL-BREF indicates that it has adequate reliability for use in research with TB patients in Taiwan. However, the factor structure generated from this TB patient sample differed from the WHO's original 4-factor model, which raised a validity concern to apply the Taiwan short version of the WHOQOL-BREF to Taiwanese TB patients. Future research recruiting another sample to revisit this validity issue must be conducted to determine the validity of the WHOQOL-BREF TW in patients with TB.