Background: Peer mentoring can be a powerful complement to health instruction. Mentoring has been used to change health behaviors and promote sustainable lifestyle patterns in adults and, more recently, among adolescents. Purpose: This article reviews the use of peer mentoring to promote health practices and describes how this approach can be used…

The present study addresses critical gaps in the literature by examining residential transitions among 303 adults with intellectual disability (ID) over 10 years (Part 1) and 75 adults with Down syndrome over 20 years (Part 2). All adults lived at home at the start of the study, but many moved to a variety of settings. Several characteristics of…

Low maternal healthcare service utilization contributes to poor maternal and new born health outcomes in rural Zambia. The purpose of this study was to identify important factors influencing women's intention to use these services in Kalomo, Zambia. An interviewer-administered questionnaire was used to collect data from 1007 women of reproductive…

Objective: This study investigated how young urban students conceptualize health and fitness and tried to identify their sources of information about health-related issues. The findings are intended to help make suggestions for policy makers to design and develop effective health-education strategies. Methods: Focus group discussions (FGDs) of 20…

The use of faith-based organizations as sites to deliver diet and physical activity interventions is increasing. Methods to assess the messaging environment within churches are limited. Our research aimed to develop and test an objective assessment methodology to characterize health messages, particularly those related to diet and physical…

Purpose/Objectives: The purpose of this paper is to provide baseline data and characteristics of food served and consumed prior to the recently mandated nutrition standards as authorized by the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 (HHFKA). Methods: Over 600,000 school lunch menus with associated food production records from 61 elementary schools…

By now, we are all aware of the effect of super-sized food portions. Very young children regulate their food intake by internal cues (when they feel full) rather than by portion size. As children age, external cues have more influence than internal cues. Hence, larger portion sizes promote more energy intake in older children, leading to caloric…

It is well established that many adolescents who smoke want to quit, but little is known about why adolescents want to quit and if reasons to quit differ across gender. The objective of this study was to determine if reasons to quit smoking differ in boys and girls. Data on the Adolescent Reasons for Quitting (ARFQ) scale were collected in mailed…

Of the handful of national studies tracking trends in adolescent substance use in the United States, only the Health Behavior in School-Aged Children (HBSC) study collects data from 6th through 10th graders. The purpose of this study was to examine trends from 1998 to 2010 (four time points) in the prevalence of tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana use…

Objective: The current study was a randomized controlled trial investigating the effect of an innovative, short-term lifestyle intervention on weight gain in female freshman college students. Participants: Ninety-five freshmen were recruited from a large public university in the United States. Methods: Participants completed baseline assessments…

The focus of the present article is on the health of adolescents, born in one of the most dramatic periods of Russian history, at the beginning of the 1990s, a period characterized by a worsening of the conditions of life, a breakdown of the established stereotypes, social stratification, an upsurge of corruption, and the moral degradation of…

Seven hundred and twenty-two undergraduates from a large southeastern university in the U.S. and 368 undergraduates from The University of Iceland in the Reykjavik, Iceland completed a 100 item Internet questionnaire revealing their (mostly white and 20-24 years old) attitudes on various relationship and sexual issues. Significant differences…

The epidemic of childhood obesity, and its subsequent impact on negative health outcomes, continues to plague the United States. Better health outcomes have been linked to increased child achievement in school. Due to the strong influence parents have on children's healthful behaviors particularly in younger years, it's imperative to examine the…

Objective: To examine the effects of a Healthy Active Living (HAL) community intervention on moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA), fruit and vegetable consumption (FVC), and psychosocial mediators of physical activity among students transitioning into university. Methods: Sixty undergraduate students were assigned to reside in either the…

Apparent bullying and victimization rates vary, depending on how these rates are measured. This study used Olweus-type global items and a short version of the School Bullying Scales to investigate the prevalence rate and behavioral ranking of bullying and victimization among secondary students in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Macao. We used the response…