PLoS medicine
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Chaim M. Bell and Lauren Lapointe-Shaw discuss the meaning of the "weekend effect" in outcomes for hospital admissions and surgeries, and comment on surprising new results published in PLOS Medicine this week.
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Substantial progress has been made towards the goal of ending the HIV/AIDS epidemic due to advancements in both prevention and treatment of HIV. However, major challenges still remain. We describe basic principles of epidemic control in the context of HIV and identify a number of attainable goals in terms of control and elimination of HIV in specific populations and risk groups, given currently available HIV prevention and treatment methods. ⋯ With regard to HIV-related mortality, we argue that elimination of death due to HIV-related causes is a feasible goal. HIV-related deaths should be treated as sentinel events triggering epidemiological investigation into the breakdowns in the HIV care continuum that led to them. We briefly discuss additional considerations that will affect the success of HIV prevention programs.
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In response to public concerns and campaigns, some United Kingdom supermarkets have implemented policies to reduce less-healthy food at checkouts. We explored the effects of these policies on purchases of less-healthy foods commonly displayed at checkouts. ⋯ There is a potential impact of checkout food polices on purchases. Voluntary supermarket-led activities may have public health benefits.
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Face-to-face brief interventions for problem drinking are effective, but they have found limited implementation in routine care and the community. Internet-based interventions could overcome this treatment gap. We investigated effectiveness and moderators of treatment outcomes in internet-based interventions for adult problem drinking (iAIs). ⋯ To our knowledge, this is the first IPDMA on internet-based interventions that has shown them to be effective in curbing various patterns of adult problem drinking in both community and healthcare settings. Waitlist control may be conducive to inflation of treatment outcomes.
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In a Policy Forum, Joseph Amon and colleagues discuss human rights indicators for tracking progress toward ending the HIV epidemic.