Health Characteristics and Birth Outcomes for "Starting Out Right," a Teen Pregnancy Program.

Purpose: To evaluate differences in health characteristics and birth outcomes for participants of a prenatal education and support program for pregnant teens, "Starting Out Right" (SOR) compared to nonparticipant pregnant teens in Pima, Maricopa, and Gila counties in Arizona to gauge benefits of program participation.

Description: The SOR program is a community education and support program for pregnant teens based on a structured curriculum. All pregnant teens living in the service area are eligible to participate.

BMI changes in adolescents treated with bupropion SR for smoking cessation.

Objective: Adolescent overweight and obesity and smoking continue to be very important health challenges because of their lasting effects on overall health. Weight gain after smoking cessation is a barrier to quitting as well as a negative consequence to health. This study reports changes in the body mass index (BMI) z-scores of adolescent smokers participating in a dose-ranging clinical trial of bupropion SR (150 mg/day and 300 mg/day) for smoking cessation.

The effect of dietary glutamate on fibromyalgia and irritable bowel symptoms.

Objectives: To examine the effects of a challenge with monosodium glutamate (MSG) as compared to placebo on the symptoms of fibromyalgia (FM), in participants who initially experienced >30% remission of symptoms on an excitotoxin elimination diet.

Methods: Fifty-seven FM patients who also had irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) were placed on a 4-week diet that excluded dietary additive excitotoxins including MSG and aspartame. Thirty-seven people completed the diet and 84% of those reported that >30% of their symptoms resolved, thus making them eligible to proceed to challenges.

Developing a university-workforce partnership to address rural and frontier MCH training needs: the Rocky Mountain Public Health Education Consortium (RMPHEC).

The objective of the article is to provide the socio-cultural, political, economic, and geographic conditions that justified a regional effort for training maternal and child health (MCH) professionals in the Rocky Mountain region, describe a historical account of factors that led to the development of the Rocky Mountain Public Health Education Consortium (RMPHEC), and present RMPHEC as a replicable model developed to enhance practice/academic partnerships among state, tribal, and public health agencies and universities to enhance public health capacity and MCH outcomes. This article provides a description of the development of the RMPHEC, the impetus that drove the Consortium's development, the process used to create it, and its management and programs. Beginning in 1997, local, regional, and federal efforts encouraged stronger MCH training and continuing education in the Rocky Mountain Region.

Psychosocial and behavioral profile and predictors of self-reported energy underreporting in obese middle-aged women.

Energy underreporting is a concern with dietary intake data; therefore, subject characteristics associated with underreporting energy intake should be elucidated. Baseline self-reported dietary intake and measures of diet and weight history, life status, weight-loss readiness, psychology, eating behavior, physical activity, and self-image of obese middle-aged women (mean body mass index [calculated as kg/m(2)]=31.0) enrolled in a lifestyle weight-loss program were evaluated.

The psychosocial and behavioral characteristics related to energy misreporting.

Energy underreporting occurs in 2% to 85% and overreporting in 1% to 39% of various populations. Efforts are needed to understand the psychosocial and behavioral characteristics associated with misreporting to help improve the accuracy of dietary self-reporting. Past research suggests that higher social desirability and greater eating restraint are key factors influencing misreporting, while a history of dieting and being overweight are more moderately associated.

The night vision threshold test is a better predictor of low serum vitamin A concentration than self-reported night blindness in pregnant urban Nepalese women.

This study was conducted to validate the night vision threshold test (NVTT) as an indicator of night blindness. A total of 1401 pregnant women from the National Maternity Hospital participated in this study. Women were queried about night blindness and took the NVTT using standardized procedures after 10 min of dark adaptation.