Culture

Where you get your news could play a significant role in determining what you perceive as the best strategy for addressing childhood obesity. According to a study led by researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, whether you believe the keys to combating childhood obesity are personal factors such as individual behavior changes or system-level factors such as marketing and the environment may depend on your primary news source.

Much coverage of the economic downturn has focussed on its immediate impact, yet it is likely to hold long-term implications for family life. A research study 'Changing Lives and Times' funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) at Cardiff University has explored the impact of the financial crisis on the daily lives and future plans of new fathers, finding that several men were making significant life changes.

The post-war trend of falling birth rates has been reversed across Europe, according to a new study, but not because of family and fertility policies. Instead, it is individual social, cultural and economic factors more than policy interventions.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – The first three patients to undergo an investigational surgical procedure for peripheral vascular disease that involves the patient's own stem cells continue to do well, reports the University of Louisville surgeon who is the principal investigator.

Tucson, Ariz. - Health insurance is not protecting Arizonans from having problems paying medical bills, and having bill problems is keeping families from getting needed medical care and prescription medicines, a new study has found.

Fish catches in Madagascar over the last half-century are double the official reports, and much of that fish is being caught by unregulated traditional fishers or accessed cheaply by foreign fishing vessels. Seafood exports from Madagascar often end up in a European recipe, but are a recipe for political unrest at home, where two-thirds of the population face hunger.

A team of social scientists and medical and nursing researchers in the United States and the United Kingdom has pinpointed how a programme, which ran in more than 100 hospital intensive care units in Michigan, dramatically reduced the rates of potentially deadly central line bloodstream infections to become one of the world's most successful patient safety programmes.

During the winter of 2009-2010 the average temperature for the UK was 1.6 degrees centigrade (°C), making it the coldest recorded winter in the last 30 years. Using winter data from 2005 to 2010, new research published in BioMed Central's open access journal Environmental Health demonstrates an inverse relationship between temperature and the number of falls on snow and ice, which result in emergency admission to hospital, and looks at the cost of these falls.

How researchers classify and quantify causes of death across a population has evolved in recent decades. In addition to long-recognized physiological causes such as heart attack and cancer, the role of behavioral factors—including smoking, dietary patterns and inactivity—began to be quantified in the 1990s. More recent research has begun to look at the contribution of social factors to U.S. mortality.

African Americans receive poorer dental care than white Americans, even when they have some dental insurance coverage. To better understand why this is so, researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health and the College of Dental Medicine, surveyed African American adults with recent oral health symptoms, including toothaches and gum disease. Their findings provide insights into why disparities persist even among those with dental insurance and suggest strategies to removing barriers to dental care.

RICHMOND, Va., (June 16, 2011) – According to new data published in Clinical Therapeutics, the way a medication is packaged can have a significant impact on whether patients take it as prescribed. The study showed that Shellpak® calendar blister packaging from MeadWestvaco Corp. (NYSE: MWV), a provider of pharmaceutical packaging solutions, was associated with improvement in prescription adherence behavior in patients when compared with traditional pill vials.

In Europe, a serious treatment gap is leaving millions of people at high risk of fragility fractures.

CHICAGO (June 15, 2011) – Geisinger Health System vaccinated more than 92% of all employees against influenza this season, with a modification of a mandatory program. On average, fewer than half of all healthcare workers receive flu vaccinations.

PHILADELPHIA – Sixty-six percent of publicly-insured children were unable to get a doctor's appointment for medical conditions requiring outpatient specialty care including diabetes and seizures, while children with identical symptoms and private insurance were turned away only 11 percent of the time, according to an audit study of specialty physician practices in Cook County, Ill. conducted by researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine and the School of Social Policy and Practice at the University of Pennsylvania.

People seeking help for their alcohol or other drug problems enter treatment with very different levels of motivation to change. Differences in motivation appear to make a critical difference in which patients seek, comply with, and complete treatment. Findings from a study of the extent to which motivation and self-efficacy – the confidence to resist temptation and to abstain from drinking – changed during treatment, and the degree to which these variables affected drinking behaviors, indicate that treatments tailored to specific subgroups may be more effective.