Preventive medicine
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Preventive medicine · Mar 2008
Relationships among multiple behaviors for childhood and adolescent obesity prevention.
Curbing the epidemic of childhood and adolescent obesity requires impacting multiple behaviors. This article examines the interrelationships of physical activity, fruit and vegetable consumption, and limiting television time among elementary, middle, and high school students. ⋯ The findings of this study provide further evidence for the need for early promotion of healthy lifestyle behaviors. The relationships among the target behaviors in three samples strongly support a multiple behavior approach for obesity prevention. Transtheoretical Model-based tailored interventions are currently being used to change multiple behaviors without overwhelming students.
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Preventive medicine · Mar 2008
ReviewMethods of quantifying change in multiple risk factor interventions.
Risky behaviors such as smoking, alcohol abuse, physical inactivity, and poor diet are detrimental to health, costly, and often co-occur. Greater efforts are being targeted at changing multiple risk behaviors to more comprehensively address the health needs of individuals and populations. With increased interest in multiple risk factor interventions, the field will need ways to conceptualize the issue of overall behavior change. ⋯ Given the lack of consensus in the field on how to examine change in multiple risk behaviors, we recommend researchers employ and compare multiple methods in their publications. A dialogue is needed to work toward developing a consensus for optimal ways of conceptualizing and reporting changes in multibehavioral interventions.
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Preventive medicine · Mar 2008
Review"Bundling" HIV prevention: integrating services to promote synergistic gain.
Bundling is defined as the aggregation of services to increase effectiveness (i.e., creating synergy of effort). The purpose of this commentary is to review the utilization and potential benefits of bundling in its application to HIV prevention. ⋯ We must implement programs that work and consider innovative approaches to stem the AIDS epidemic; bundling provides one such opportunity to create an efficient paradigm targeting multiple risk behaviors simultaneously.
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Preventive medicine · Mar 2008
Randomized Controlled TrialInitial efficacy of MI, TTM tailoring and HRI's with multiple behaviors for employee health promotion.
This study was designed to compare the initial efficacy of Motivational Interviewing (MI), Online Transtheoretical Model (TTM)-tailored communications and a brief Health Risk Intervention (HRI) on four health risk factors (inactivity, BMI, stress and smoking) in a worksite sample. ⋯ This was the first study to demonstrate that MI and online TTM could produce significant multiple behavior changes. Future research will examine the long-term impacts of each treatment, their cost effectiveness, effects on productivity and quality of life and process variables mediating outcomes.
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Preventive medicine · Mar 2008
Clinical TrialMultiple health-risk behavior in a chronic disease population: what behaviors do people choose to change?
To determine what health behaviors patients choose to change in response to medical advice when they are given the potential net-present value (reduction in biological age) of modifying a behavior. ⋯ Patients with coronary disease are more likely to choose strength training and reducing weight regardless of knowing the biological-age reduction of any given behavior.