In response to aggressive marketing of tobacco to college students, Florida's legislature allocated multi-settlement agreement dollars to fund tobacco prevention programming at state institutions of higher learning. The Student Tobacco Reform Initiative: Knowledge for Eternity (STRIKE) was one such program. Its purpose was to increase awareness…

The dietary intake of children in the United Kingdom and other minority world countries is an area that is causing increasing concern. These concerns are often expressed around the high levels of childhood obesity and the early onset of dental caries. In this review of the literature, I examine a range of approaches to the study of food and…

This paper describes current trends in the HIV/AIDS epidemic. It looks at issues and strategies involved in educating women about HIV/AIDS in the context of the global pandemic, focusing particularly on Canada and Vietnam. These strategies are essential steps in preventing the spread of HIV and in caring for those who have already developed AIDS.…

It is increasingly argued that the effectiveness of health promotion interventions should be measured to inform policy and practice. The randomized controlled trial (RCT) continues to be regarded as the "gold standard" of health services research but health promotion practitioners have raised concerns about the RCT's appropriateness for evaluating…

The aim of this study was to gain an understanding of older people's perceptions of falls prevention advice, and how best to design communications that will encourage older people to take action to prevent falls. Focus groups and interviews were carried out with 66 people aged 61-94 years recruited from a variety of settings, using falls…

This paper describes the findings from a two-year research project which investigated ways to support culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) families with very young children accessing child care services. The families resided in low income areas and were deemed to be at risk of social isolation and related problems. The research findings…

Purpose: To assess what volunteers--and ministers of faith-based organizations (FBO) think about their own expertise in delivering a tobacco prevention initiative, the impact of such an initiative on youth, their potential for burnout in doing so, and their interest in other health initiatives. Design/methodology/approach: A total of 149…

An evolving body of research has examined the process of mentoring relationships among senior and junior faculty in health education and health promotion academic programs. However, little attention has been given to understanding the specific content of interactions between mentors and proteges. This qualitative research was conducted to identify…

Objective: The aim of this review was to explore attendance of UK exercise referral schemes (ERS), who attends them, why participants drop out of schemes and to compare evaluations of existing ERS with randomised controlled trials (RCTs). Design: Systematic review. Method: A search of major databases was conducted to identify studies investigating…

Scotland has the worst health in the United Kingdom; worse than comparable areas like the industrial North East of England. Scotland's health also lags behind comparable European countries. In fact, the nearest neighbours in the health "league table" of European nations are Slovenia and Portugal. One has only a limited understanding of…

The article by Fantuzzo, McWayne, and Bulotsky (2003) describes a model for addressing the former U.S. Surgeon General's (USDHHS, 1999) priorities for improving mental health service delivery to the nation's children. The authors identify several elements that characterize their own work and that can guide the work of school psychologists and…

Objectives: To describe the Better Practices model and its application to review youth tobacco cessation practices. Methods: Growing emphasis on evidence-based practice in health has drawn attention to methods for the identification of "best practices." Canadian organizations and government collaborated to develop a framework for…

Complex environmental health problems--like air and water pollution, hazardous waste sites, and lead poisoning--are in reality a constellation of linked problems embedded in the fabric of the communities in which they occur. These kinds of complex problems have been characterized by some as "wicked problems" wherein stakeholders may have…

Two public health objectives, one methodological and the other substantive, are realized in the present study. First, average survey ratings are replaced by negated mean cumulative logits (MCLs), which have the advantage of interitem commensuration. Second, these negated MCLs improve the analysis of two Florida tobacco control surveys of community…

Already in childhood, (a) high general and visceral fatness and poor cardiovascular (CV) fitness are linked with dyslipidemia, elevated blood pressure, and insulin resistance; (b) higher fatness is associated with low amounts of vigorous physical activity (PA) and relatively "low" energy intake; (c) higher CV fitness is more clearly associated…