Preventive medicine
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The purpose of this study was to estimate the extent of and to identify predictors of preadolescent gun use in a well child cohort with matched parent and child data. ⋯ In this well child cohort, significant numbers of preadolescent, healthy boys in white, middle-class U.S. homes have access to guns, are using guns, and have friends who use guns. These children are also early alcohol adopters. Safety interventions with parents of preadolescents about the risks for accidental injury, death, and suicide due to child gun use may prove beneficial.
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Preventive medicine · Mar 2001
Comparative StudySmoking initiation and cessation by gender and educational level in Catalonia, Spain.
The role of gender and socioeconomic status in smoking has been characterized in the United States and Northern European countries. However, there is scarce information of the dynamic of the tobacco epidemic in Southern European countries. The aim of this study was to analyze smoking initiation and cessation according to level of education and gender in Catalonia, Spain. ⋯ The differential effect of education according to gender may reflect different phases of the smoking epidemic. In Catalonia, the transition of smoking from upper and lower socioeconomic groups occurred recently among men, and women have currently begun to experience this transition.
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Preventive medicine · Feb 2001
Multicenter StudyGender differences in the longitudinal predictors of adolescent dating violence.
Adolescent dating violence is a public health problem. The public health approach to prevention is to identify predictors of problem behaviors and develop interventions to eliminate or reduce those predictors with the intention of altering the chain of causation. Longitudinal data are preferred for identifying predictors of behavior but all dating violence studies have used cross-sectional data. We use longitudinal data to examine predictors of adolescent dating violence from several domains guided by an ecological perspective. ⋯ The findings suggest that intervention strategies should vary for males and females and that when basing interventions on cross-sectional findings, scarce resources may be stretched to address persons who may not truly be at risk of beginning to perpetrate dating violence.
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Preventive medicine · Feb 2001
Physician intervention and patient risk perception among smokers with acute respiratory illness in the emergency department.
Acute Respiratory Illness accounts for over 12 million visits to emergency departments in the United States each year. Between one-fourth and one-half of these patients are smokers. We examined the frequency of physician intervention for smoking cessation among acute respiratory illness patients in the emergency department, and examined the influence of physician intervention on patients' perceived risk from smoking and motivation to quit. ⋯ The small sample size in this study requires that results be interpreted with caution. However, the findings of this study suggest that the emergency department setting may provide a unique "teachable moment" in which to initiate smoking cessation counseling for this high-risk population.
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Preventive medicine · Jan 2001
Randomized Controlled Trial Multicenter Study Clinical TrialCounselor and stimulus control enhancements of a stage-matched expert system intervention for smokers in a managed care setting.
Previous research has demonstrated the efficacy of an interactive expert system intervention for smoking cessation for a general population. The intervention provides individualized feedback that guides participants through the stages of change for cessation. Enhancing the expert system by adding proactive telephone counseling or a stimulus control computer designed to produce nicotine fading could produce preventive programs with greater population impacts. ⋯ The enhanced conditions failed to outperform the expert system alone. The study also demonstrated the ability of the interactive expert system to produce significantly greater cessation in a population of smokers than assessment alone.