Articles: health.
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Weight, height, and arm circumference were measured in 7304 children 1 to 5 years old in Columbia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, India, and Pakistan. Previously developed indices using these measures were applied to assess nutritional status, and the agreement between measures was compared. Weight for age and height for age deficits increased with age while weight for height deficits diminished. ⋯ Good agreement in malnutrition diagnoses was found between a weight for height limit of 90% of standard and a weight for age limit of 75% of standard. A cut-off point of 80% of standard weight for height was too low to detect most malnourished children. An age-constant arm circumference limit of 13.5 cm identified nearly all children with severe or acute malnutrition by weight for age or weight for height.
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A comparison of health status between 779 Seventh-day Adventists, who have a strong commitment to heal-related life styles, and two other groups of people--8363 persons referred by general practitioners and 9825 volunteers--was made. The Seventh-day Adventists showed less impairment of systolic and diastolic blood pressures, of plasma cholesterol and plasma urate concentrations, and of lung ventilatory capacity; and less obesity at most specific ages. ⋯ Depression, sleeplessness, use of sedatives and tranquillizers were lower in the Seventh-day Adventists; although, once again, a drawing together of the three groups in older age categories was evident. It is concluded that the life style of Seventh-day Adventists is conducive to lessened morbidity, delayed mortality, and decreased call on health services in comparison with the general population.
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Our objectives are to describe the pattern of abuse associated with battering and to evaluate the contribution of the medical system and of broader social forces to its emergence. A pilot study of 481 women who used the emergency service of a large metropolitan hospital in the U. S. shows that battering includes a history of self-abuse and psychosocial problems, as well as repeated and escalating physical injury. ⋯ Although secondary problems such as depression, drug abuse, suicide attempts, or alcoholism derive as much from the intervention strategy adopted as from physical assault or psychopathology, they are treated as the primary problems at psychiatric and social service referral points where family maintenance is often the therapeutic goal. One consequence of this referral strategy is the stabilization of "violent families" in ways that virtually insure women will be abused in systematic and arbitrary ways. The use of patriarchal logic by medical providers ostensibly responding to physical trauma has less to do with individual "sexism" than with the political and economic constraints under which medicine operates as part of an "extended patriarchy." Medicine's role in battering suggests that the services function to reconstitute the "private" world of patriarchal authority, with violence if necessary, against demands to socialize the labors of love.