A childhood obesity prevention programme in Barcelona (POIBA Project): Study protocol of the intervention.

Background: Childhood obesity preventive interventions should promote a healthy diet and physical activity at home and school. This study aims to describe a school-based childhood obesity preventive programme (POIBA Project) targeting 8-to-12- year-olds.

Design And Methods: Evaluation study of a school-based intervention with a pre-post quasi-experimental design and a comparison group.

Commentary: approaches, strengths, and limitations of avoidable mortality.

Publication of recent papers such as the one by Schoenbaum and colleagues entitled 'Mortality Amenable to Health Care in the United States: The Roles of Demographics and Health Systems Performance' has stimulated this commentary. We discuss strengths and limitations of amenable and avoidable mortality in health-care systems' performance and their contribution to health inequalities. To illustrate, we present a case study of avoidable and amenable mortality in Spain over 27 years.

Socioeconomic inequalities in mortality in 16 European cities.

Aims: To explore inequalities in total mortality between small areas of 16 European cities for men and women, as well as to analyse the relationship between these geographical inequalities and their socioeconomic indicators.

Methods: A cross-sectional ecological design was used to analyse small areas in 16 European cities (26,229,104 inhabitants). Most cities had mortality data for a period between 2000 and 2008 and population size data for the same period.

[Trends in social inequalities in health in Catalonia, Spain].

The aim of this work is to analyze the evolution of social class inequalities in men and women in health status, health related behaviours and utilization of health services in Catalonia between 1994 and 2006. This is a study of trends based on the analysis of the Encuesta de Salud de Cataluña. To examine the association between 12 dependent variables and social class in each survey, robust Poisson regression models were fitted.

Socio-economic inequalities in breast and cervical cancer screening practices in Europe: influence of the type of screening program.

Background: The aim of this study was to describe inequalities in the use of breast and cervical cancer screening services according to educational level in European countries in 2002, and to determine the influence of the type of screening program on the extent of inequality.

Methods: A cross-sectional study was performed using individual-level data from the WHO World Health Survey (2002) and data regarding the implementation of cancer screening programmes. The study population consisted of women from 22 European countries, aged 25-69 years for cervical cancer screening (n =11 770) and 50-69 years for breast cancer screening (n = 4784).