Some harm reduction strategies encourage individuals to switch from a harmful addictive good to a less harmful addictive good; examples include e-cigarettes (substitutes for combustible cigarettes) and methadone and buprenorphine (substitutes for opioids). These have proven to be controversial. Advocates argue that people struggling with addiction benefit because they can switch to a less harmful substance, but opponents argue that this could encourage abstainers to begin using the harm-reduction method or even, eventually, the original addictive good.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEstimates of the impact of body mass index and obesity on health and labor market outcomes often use instrumental variables estimation (IV) to mitigate bias due to endogeneity. When these studies rely on survey data that include self- or proxy-reported height and weight, there is non-classical measurement error due to the tendency of individuals to under-report their own weight. Mean reverting errors in weight do not cause IV to be asymptotically biased per se, but may result in bias if instruments are correlated with additive error in weight.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFImportance: Food-as-medicine programs are becoming increasingly common, and rigorous evidence is needed regarding their effects on health.
Objective: To test whether an intensive food-as-medicine program for patients with diabetes and food insecurity improves glycemic control and affects health care use.
Design, Setting, And Participants: This stratified randomized clinical trial using a wait list design was conducted from April 19, 2019, to September 16, 2022, with patients followed up for 1 year.
Poor quality diets represent major risk factors for the global burden of disease. Modeling studies indicate a potential for diet-related fiscal and pricing policies (FPs) to improve health. There is real-world evidence (RWE) that such policies can change behavior; however, the evidence regarding health is less clear.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFContext: Poor diet has been implicated in a range of noncommunicable diseases. Fiscal and pricing policies (FPs) may offer a means by which consumption of food and non-alcoholic beverages with links to such diseases can be influenced to improve public health.
Objective: To examine the acceptability of FPs to reduce diet-related noncommunicable disease, based on systematic review evidence.
Taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) are relatively new and there is limited evidence about their impact on SSB consumption or body mass index (BMI) (as opposed to prices, purchases, or sales), their impact on youth (as opposed to adults), or their impact in non-Western nations. This paper adds to the evidence across all these dimensions by estimating the effect of an SSB tax on SSB consumption and the BMI of youth in Mauritius, an island nation in the Indian Ocean, which we compare to Maldives, another island nation which did not implement an SSB tax during the time of our data. Results of difference-in-differences models indicate that the tax in Mauritius had no detectable impact on the consumption of SSBs or the BMI of the pooled sample of boys and girls.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the Children's Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative (CFBAI) in reducing children's exposure to ads for candy and sweetened beverages.
Methods: Survey data were used to determine the television programs that children watch and the time slots during which they watch television. Advertisement placement data were used to count the number of candy and sweetened beverage (SB) ads appearing on programs and during those time slots.
Introduction: Efficacy tests of physical activity interventions indicate that many have limited or short-term efficacy, principally because they do not sufficiently build on theory-based processes that determine behaviour. The current study aims to address this limitation.
Methods And Analysis: The efficacy of the 8-week intervention will be tested using a three-condition randomised controlled trial delivered through an app, in women with a prior hypertensive pregnancy disorder.
The objective of this study was to estimate disparities in exposure to television advertising of sugar-sweetened and non-nutritive sweetened beverages among U.S. adults and teens.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: To estimate the causal effect of obesity on job absenteeism and the associated lost productivity in the United States, both nationwide and by state.
Methods: We conducted a retrospective pooled cross-sectional analysis using the 2001 to 2016 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey and estimated two-part models of instrumental variables.
Results: Obesity, relative to normal weight, raises job absenteeism due to injury or illness by 3.
†Pycnodontiformes was a successful lineage of primarily marine fishes that broadly diversified during the Mesozoic. They possessed a wide variety of body shapes and were adapted to a broad range of food sources. Two other neopterygian clades possessing similar ecological adaptations in both body morphology (†Dapediiformes) and dentition (Ginglymodi) also occurred in Mesozoic seas.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Manag Care Spec Pharm
March 2021
After a dramatic increase in prevalence over several decades, obesity has become a major public health crisis in the United States. Research to date has consistently demonstrated a correlation between obesity and higher medical costs for a variety of U.S.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSince 2017, many US cities have implemented taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages to decrease consumption of sugary beverages and raise revenue. We analyze household receipt data to examine the impact of taxes on households' beverage purchases in the four largest US cities with such taxes: Philadelphia, PA; San Francisco, CA; Seattle, WA; and Oakland, CA. We compare changes in monthly household purchases in the treatment cities with changes in two comparison groups: (1) areas adjacent to the treatment cities or (2) a matched set of households nationally.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMeta-analysis has been used to examine the effectiveness of childhood obesity prevention efforts, yet traditional conventional meta-analytic methods restrict the kinds of studies included, and either narrowly define mechanisms and agents of change, or examine the effectiveness of whole interventions as opposed to the specific actions that comprise interventions. Taxonomic meta-analytic methods widen the aperture of what can be included in a meta-analysis data set, allowing for inclusion of many types of interventions and study designs. The National Collaborative on Childhood Obesity Research Childhood Obesity Evidence Base (COEB) project focuses on interventions intended to prevent childhood obesity in children 2-5 years old who have an outcome measure of BMI.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTo evaluate the efficacy of childhood obesity interventions and conduct a taxonomy of intervention components that are most effective in changing obesity-related health outcomes in children 2-5 years of age. Comprehensive searches located 51 studies from 18,335 unique records. Eligible studies: (1) assessed children aged 2-5, living in the United States; (2) evaluated an intervention to improve weight status; (3) identified a same-aged comparison group; (4) measured BMI; and (5) were available between January 2005 and August 2019.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSeveral cities in the U.S. have implemented taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) in an attempt to improve public health and raise revenue.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis paper is the first to use the method of instrumental variables to estimate the impact of obesity and severe obesity in youth. on U.S.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe Upper Cretaceous (Cenomanian) limestone quarry of Haqel, Lebanon, is home to one of the largest diversities of fossil actinopterygians in the Mesozoic, particularly of pycnodontiform fishes. Here, we describe a pycnodontiform fish, , gen. et sp.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNumerous U.S. cities have recently enacted taxes on sweetened beverages.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCommunity-based interventions may reduce and prevent childhood obesity by transforming the environments in which children live, learn, and play through a series of interventions implemented throughout the community that encourage healthy behaviors. While empirical support is building for the effectiveness of such interventions, little is known about the economic costs and benefits of community-wide childhood obesity interventions. This study examined whether the benefits of a community-wide, child-focused, obesity prevention intervention, Shape Up Somerville: Eat Smart Play Hard (SUS), exceeded its costs by estimating its return on investment.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA large literature has documented strong positive correlations among siblings in health, including body mass index (BMI) and obesity. This paper tests whether that is explained by a specific type of peer effect in obesity: genetic nurture. Specifically, we test whether an individual's weight is affected by the genes of their sibling, controlling for the individual's own genes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDuring the past decade, dozens of countries, regions, and cities have enacted taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs). They have been primarily motivated by a desire to raise prices, reduce sales and consumption, improve population health, and raise revenue. This review outlines the economic rationale for SSB taxes and illustrates their predicted effects.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn the last decade, health care reform has dominated U.S. public policy and political discourse.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF