A trajectory analysis of alcohol and marijuana use among Latino adolescents in San Francisco, California.

Purpose: We examined alcohol and marijuana use trajectories among Latino adolescents in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Methods: A total of 410 Latino adolescents aged 14-19 years were recruited from community venues from years 2001 to 2004 and followed up for 2 years. In separate models, we identified groups with similar temporal patterns of alcohol and marijuana use using semi-parametric latent group trajectory modeling.

Maternal mortality in developing countries: challenges in scaling-up priority interventions.

Although maternal mortality is a significant global health issue, achievements in mortality decline to date have been inadequate. A review of the interventions targeted at maternal mortality reduction demonstrates that most developing countries face tremendous challenges in the implementation of these interventions, including the availability of unreliable data and the shortage in human and financial resources, as well as limited political commitment. Examples from developing countries, such as Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Honduras, demonstrate that maternal mortality will decline when appropriate strategies are in place.

Poverty, gender inequities, and women's risk of human immunodeficiency virus/AIDS.

Entrenched economic and gender inequities together are driving a globally expanding, increasingly female, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)/AIDS epidemic. To date, significant population-level declines in HIV transmission have not been observed, at least in part because most approaches to prevention have presumed a degree of individual control in decision making that does not speak to the reality of women's and girls' circumstances in many parts of the world. Such efforts have paid insufficient attention to critical characteristics of the risk environment, most notably poverty and gender power inequities.