Preventive medicine
-
Preventive medicine · Mar 1993
ReviewDo obese children become obese adults? A review of the literature.
Obese children may be at increased risk of becoming obese adults. To examine the relationship between obesity in childhood and obesity in adulthood, we reviewed the epidemiologic literature published between 1970 and July 1992. Comparison between studies was complicated by differences in study design, definitions of obesity, and analytic methods used. Although the correlations between anthropometric measures of obesity in childhood and those in adulthood varied considerably among studies, the associations were consistently positive. ⋯ The wide range of estimates in this literature are, in part, due to differences in study designs, definitions of obesity, ages at which participants were measured, intervals between measurements, and population and cultural differences.
-
Preventive medicine · Jan 1993
Educational attainment and coronary heart disease risk: the Framingham Offspring Study.
Efforts to control the continuing epidemic of coronary heart disease in the United States have been successful according to certain criteria, such as mortality, but by others, such as morbidity, the picture is less clear. Documenting whether various subgroups of the population have adopted healthier lifestyles that are likely to reduce coronary heart disease risk is essential to understanding the status of the epidemic and, most importantly, to formulating prevention and health education strategies that will ameliorate its effects. ⋯ This study indicates that most components of the coronary heart disease risk profile show adverse levels in individuals with low educational attainment.
-
With greater longevity people are increasingly concerned about how to avoid disability during their longer lives. Policy decisions concerning ways to extend health as well as life have become part of the nation's health agenda. ⋯ Observation now reveals that, taking into account age, gender, physical health status, and social network index in 1965, the occurrence of disability was only about one-half as great among the cohort survivors in 1974 who reported good health practices in 1965 as among those with poor health practices; those with an intermediate level of health practices experienced about two-thirds the relative disability risk of those with poor health practices. Essentially similar relationships prevailed for the 1982/1983 survivors of the original (1965) cohort who, upon requestioning, had been found to be without disability in 1974.
-
Preventive medicine · Nov 1992
Compensation strategies in sun protection behaviors by a population with nonmelanoma skin cancer.
Initiation of sun protection strategies can be promoted, to some extent, by educational efforts, but little is known about the merit of continuing education interventions in sustaining the desired behaviors or adding new behaviors. This prospective study clarifies the choices individuals make among the four strategies that allow them to maintain lifestyle changes. ⋯ While the greatest reported change in behavior was temporarily associated with educational intervention linked to removal of the skin cancer, continued educational efforts may have recruited some individuals to cease tanning and encouraged others to adopt the use of protective clothing or more frequent sunscreen use as they were unable to maintain the limitations on outdoor activities. It is not possible to structure a control group restricted from mass media education; therefore, the effectiveness of specific behavior-directed education cannot be precisely determined. Nonetheless, the population described using knowledge to develop compensation sun protection strategies that preserved lifestyle.
-
Our research objective is to develop nontoxic cancer chemopreventive agents and to apply these agents in treating humans. We are identifying agents that inhibit the process of tumor promotion in two-stage carcinogenesis experiments on mouse skin. ⋯ We believe that the main constituent of Japanese green tea, EGCG, is a practical cancer chemopreventive agent available in everyday life.