Preventive medicine
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Preventive medicine · Mar 1998
Randomized Controlled Trial Clinical TrialHealthy Start: a comprehensive health education program for preschool children.
Healthy Start is a 3-year demonstration and education research project designed to evaluate the effectiveness of a multidimensional cardiovascular (CV) risk reduction intervention in preschool centers over a 3-year period of time. ⋯ While substantial efforts have targeted CV risk reduction and health education for elementary school children, similar efforts aimed at preschool children have been lacking. The rationale for beginning CV risk reduction programs for preschool children is based upon the premise that risk factors for heart disease are prevalent by 3 years of age and tend to track over time, most commonly hypercholesterolemia and obesity, both related to nutrition. Since the behavioral antecedents for nutritional risk factors begin to be established very early in life, it is important to develop and evaluate new educational initiatives such as Healthy Start, aimed at the primary prevention of cardiovascular risk factors in preschool children. The purpose of this publication is to describe the rationale and methods for the Healthy Start project.
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Preventive medicine · Mar 1998
Randomized Controlled Trial Comparative Study Clinical TrialTransdermal nicotine replacement for hospitalized patients: a randomized clinical trial.
This study was undertaken to assess the safety and efficacy of a treatment involving brief counseling and the nicotine patch among hospital inpatients and to identify variables associated with long-term smoking cessation following hospitalization. ⋯ The initiation of nicotine patch therapy during hospitalization appears to be safe when used among patients carrying a wide range of diagnoses. Our study provided no evidence of the superiority of nicotine patches versus placebo, but this does not preclude the possibility that future research using larger samples might detect differences between patch groups. Hospital interventions for smoking cessation may be most effective among patients hospitalized for a smoking-related illness such as respiratory disease.