Training in youth-friendly service provision improves nurses' competency level in the Great Lakes Region.

Objectives: This survey investigates whether relevant training and availability of guidelines improve self-reported competencies of nurses in the provision of youth-friendly sexual and reproductive health services in South-Kivu Province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi, and Rwanda.

Methods: A quantitative baseline survey was conducted among nurses in randomly selected health facilities. Nurses providing youth-friendly sexual and reproductive health services were asked to self-rate their competencies with regards to technical knowledge, clinical, and communication skills.

Sexual violence as a risk factor for family planning-related outcomes among young Burundian women.

Objectives: The study aimed to examine associations between experience of sexual violence and family planning-related outcomes.

Methods: A multi-stage cluster survey was conducted among a representative sample of 744 young women aged 15-24 in eight provinces in Burundi.

Results: The prevalence of young women who reported having ever been physically forced to have sexual intercourse was 26.

Parental attitudes towards measles vaccination in the canton of Aargau, Switzerland: a latent class analysis.

Background: Despite the successes of routine national childhood vaccination programmes, measles remains a public health concern. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how patterns of parental attitudes are linked to the decision-making process for or against MMR vaccination. This exploratory study was designed to identify distinct patterns of attitudes towards or against measles vaccination through Latent Class Analysis (LCA) in a sub-sample of mothers living in the canton of Aargau in Switzerland.

The baby-friendly hospital initiative in Switzerland: trends over a 9-year period.

Background: This article reports the trends over a 9-year period for 4 steps of the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI) (exclusive breastfeeding, uninterrupted rooming-in, no use of pacifiers, and initiation of breastfeeding within the first 2 hours after birth) during hospital stays in Switzerland.

Methods: Data were collected annually over a period of 9 years from a monitoring survey of all BFHI-accredited hospitals in Switzerland (between 41 and 65 hospitals). The number of participants included in the study per year ranged between 15 627 and 31 141 healthy mother-newborn pairs.

Dental visits, oral hygiene behaviour, and orthodontic treatment in Switzerland.

Since the first survey in 1992/93, the Swiss Health Survey (SHS) has been repeated every 5 years (1997, 2002 and 2007). In the present study, dental visits (dental care utilisation within the last 12 months), oral hygiene measures and the frequency of orthodontic treatments in the Swiss population in 2002 were examined and dental visits were compared with the years 1992/93, 1997 and 2007. Weighted data were analysed regarding different sociodemographic factors.

The interrelation between premenstrual syndrome and major depression: results from a population-based sample.

Background: Research about the relationship between premenstrual syndrome (PMS) and major depression is limited. This study examined the relationship between moderate to severe PMS and major depression in a population-based sample of women of reproductive age. The objectives of the study were to assess the association between premenstrual syndrome and major depression, to analyse how PMS and major depression differ and to characterise the group of women who report both PMS and major depression.

Aging images as a motivational trigger for smoking cessation in young women.

Recruiting adolescents into smoking cessation programs has been challenging, and there is a lack of effective smoking cessation interventions for this age group. We aimed to assess whether the approach of using aging images can be used to recruit young, female smokers for a smoking cessation course. In this study, 853 14- to 18-year-old subjects were photographed (2006-2007).