Preventive medicine
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Preventive medicine · Dec 2017
High school cigarette smoking and post-secondary education enrollment: Longitudinal findings from the NEXT Generation Health Study.
The inverse association between smoking and educational attainment has been reported in cross-sectional studies. Temporality between smoking and education remains unclear. Our study examines the prospective association between high school cigarette and smoking post-secondary education enrollment. ⋯ These associations were independent of demographic and socioeconomic factors. There was a prospective association between high school smoking and the unlikelihood of enrollment in post-secondary education. If this represents a causal association, strategies to prevent/delay smoking onset and promote early cessation in adolescents may provide further health benefits by promoting higher educational attainment.
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Preventive medicine · Dec 2017
Do high vs. low purchasers respond differently to a nonessential energy-dense food tax? Two-year evaluation of Mexico's 8% nonessential food tax.
It is unclear whether response to a nonessential food tax varies across time or for high vs. low-consuming households. The objective is to examine whether the effect of Mexico's 2014 8% nonessential energy-dense foods tax increased in the second year post-implementation and whether it differentially affected households by pre-tax purchasing pattern. We used longitudinal data on Mexican household food purchases (n=6089 households) from 2012 to 2015. ⋯ Post-tax change in % taxed food purchases varied by pre-tax purchasing level. Healthy purchasers showed no post-tax change in % taxed food purchases beyond the counterfactual, while unhealthy, low and high purchasers decreased (-12.3%, -5.3% and -4.4%, respectively) (p<0.01). The positive effect of Mexico's junk food tax continued in the second year, and households with greater preferences for taxed foods showed a larger decline in taxed food purchases.
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Preventive medicine · Dec 2017
Variability in self-rated health trajectories from adolescence to young adulthood by demographic factors.
Self-rated health (SRH) is a robust measure of general health status and an indicator of where and when to target disease prevention efforts-especially in adolescent populations when clinical endpoints are rare. This study's purpose was to model SRH trajectories from ages 13 to 31 and identify whether and when differences between demographic groups emerge. We employed a conditional latent growth model of SRH in December 2016 using a nationally representative sample of 11,512 adolescents from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health data collected in 1994-2008. ⋯ Individuals who grew up in households without two parents and whose parents did not graduate college had consistently lower SRH compared to those living in households with two parents and whose parents graduated college. Self-rated health is not stable over the span of early adolescence to young adulthood; demographic factors account for differences in individual variability around the starting point and overtime changes in SRH. Because these differences are apparent as early as age 13years, prevention efforts targeting demographic-based disparities should occur early in life.
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Preventive medicine · Dec 2017
Changes in cigarette prices, affordability, and brand-tier consumption after a tobacco tax increase in Thailand: Evidence from the Global Adult Tobacco Surveys, 2009 and 2011.
Despite the 2009 implementation of a tobacco tax increase in Thailand, smoking rates remained unchanged between 2009 and 2011. Prior evidence has linked cigarette tax increases to compensatory behaviours aimed at lowering the cost of smoking, such as switching to lower-priced cigarette brands. Using data from 2009 and 2011 Global Adult Tobacco Surveys in Thailand, we estimated unadjusted changes in cigarette prices paid, cigarette affordability, and consumption of cigarettes in three price categories classified as upper-, middle-, and lower-priced brand tiers (or price tertiles). ⋯ There was a significant reduction in the consumption of cigarette brands in the top price-tier overall, accompanied by increases in the consumption of brands in the bottom and middle price-tiers, depending on the region. Adjusted estimates from the logit models indicate that, on average, the proportion of smokers selecting brands from upper- and middle price-tiers decreased while consumption of lower price-tier brands increased during the study period. The estimated shifts in consumption from more expensive to less expensive cigarette brands and the overall lack of change in cigarette affordability in Thailand between 2009 and 2011 are both factors that may have contributed to the observed lack of change in smoking rates after the 2009 tax increase.
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People socially connected with each other often share health risks, possibly due to shared environments and behaviors. In a cohort study, we examined whether incidence of diabetes was different for individuals with recently diagnosed partners compared to individuals similar on other characteristics but whose partners were never diagnosed with diabetes. We analyzed 2007-11 data from Kaiser Permanente Northern California (KPNC), an integrated health system with >3.5 million members. We estimated annual diabetes incidence controlling for demographic, socio-economic, behavioral, and health characteristics. Using propensity score matching and multivariate logistic regression, we compared odds of incident diabetes among co-residing partners ages 18-89years of people who had been diagnosed with diabetes during the previous year (in robustness checks up to the previous three years) and people who had never been diagnosed but were similar on observed characteristics. Partners of newly-diagnosed people had annual diabetes incidence of 16.4/1000, equivalent to10.8 times higher (95%CI: 9.2-12.6) than people whose spouses had never been diagnosed (1.5/1000). Odds remained higher three years after a spouses' diagnosis (45.4 vs. 11.7/1000). Adjusting for other characteristics, odds of diabetes for those with a partner diagnosed in the previous year were 8.7 times higher (CI: 7.4-10.2) than among those whose partner had never been diagnosed. Also, partners of persons with recently-diagnosed diabetes developed diabetes at much higher rates than the general KPNC and U.S. ⋯ Individuals with a recently diagnosed partner could be considered a high-risk population for screening and prevention.