The association of smoking with perception of income inequality, relative material well-being, and social capital.

The aim of this study is to examine the association of smoking status with income inequality, relative deprivation, perception of relative material well-being and community-level social capital, controlling for individual-level indicators of social capital, and common socio-economic variables. Data were from telephone interviews of approximately 126 residents selected at random (using the Electronic White Pages) from each of 22 local government areas (LGAs) in the Melbourne metropolitan region, Victoria, Australia (total n = 2762). We used logistic regression to assess the association of covariates with smoking status.

Comparison of health estimates between Victorian Population Health Surveys and National Health Surveys.

Objective: The computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) method has grown rapidly in recent years as an epidemiological tool for obtaining data on health issues. However, it is still argued that coverage, methods and lower response rates from CATI surveys compared with face-to-face interviewing may have an impact on the validity of the health estimates obtained. This paper compares demographic and health estimates from the Victorian Population Health Survey (VPHS) 2001, using CATI, with the National Health Survey (NHS) 2001 that is based on face-to-face interviews.

A public health model of the social determinants of health.

As we move forward in the new century, epidemiologists and public health practitioners are faced with the challenge of reviewing the current direction of epidemiology and its links with public health. While the history of epidemiology has been a successful and productive one, there is a danger that modern epidemiology is becoming too narrow in its scope, concerned primarily with the analysis of risk factors in individuals, while ignoring sociological and ecological perspectives of health. We argue that a theoretical framework to guide the practice of epidemiology is needed which encompasses a role for social determinants of health while simultaneously also acknowledging the importance of behaviour and biology, and the inter-connectedness of all these factors.

The Victorian Ambulatory Care Sensitive Conditions study: reducing demand on hospital services in Victoria.

Ambulatory Care Sensitive Conditions (ACSCs) are those for which hospitalisation is thought to be avoidable if preventive care and early disease management are applied, usually in the ambulatory setting. The Victorian ACSCs study offers a new set of indicators describing differentials and inequalities in access to the primary healthcare system in Victoria. The study used the Victorian Admitted Episodes Dataset (1999-2000) for analysing hospital admissions for diabetes complications, asthma, vaccine preventable influenza and pneumococcal pneumonia.