American journal of preventive medicine
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Similar to the well-documented racial inequities in health status, disease burden, healthcare access, and hospitalization, studies have generally found higher rates of hospitalization resulting from ambulatory care-sensitive conditions for blacks compared to whites. Beyond identifying disparity in rates of disease or risks of hospitalization, identifying disparity in age at hospitalization may provide deeper insight into the social and economic effects of disparities on individuals, families, and communities. ⋯ Racial disparities in age at preventable hospitalization exist across a spectrum of conditions. This difference in age at hospitalization places an undue burden on individuals, families, and society with long-term health and financial sequelae. Promoting equity in disease prevention, management, and treatment should be a priority of any healthcare reform efforts.
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Low-income and minority children have higher rates of obesity and overweight. Greater understanding of their food access is important. Because of higher rates of walking to school in these populations, these children likely have greater exposure to the food environment immediately around their schools. Mobile food vendors are an understudied aspect of the food environment in U.S. urban areas. ⋯ Mobile food vendors in urban areas contribute to after-school snacking among children, and should be considered as a component of the school food environment.
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Interventions to increase children's physical activity have had limited success. One reason may be that children and their parents overestimate children's levels of physical activity, although there is a small amount of data on this topic. ⋯ Most parents of inactive children wrongly consider their children to be sufficiently active; parents of children with a lower fat mass index appear to assume that their children are adequately active. Increasing awareness regarding health benefits of physical activity beyond weight control might help reverse misperceptions of physical activity levels and encourage behavior change.
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Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a life-altering condition that has affected many of our soldiers returning from war. In the current conflicts, the improvised explosive device (IED) has greatly increased the potential for soldiers to sustain a TBI. This study's objective was to establish benchmark admission rates for U.S. Army soldiers with TBIs identified during deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan. ⋯ Future surveillance of TBI hospitalization rates is needed to evaluate the effectiveness of implementation of preventive measures.
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With the epidemic of childhood obesity, there is national interest in state-level school policies related to nutrition and physical activity, policies adopted by states, and relationships to youth obesity. ⋯ States appear to be doing a better job adopting FSN policies than PA or WA policies, and adoption of policies is correlated with youth obesity. Continued monitoring of these policies seems to be warranted.