Tobacco Use, Quitting, and Service Access for Northern California Arab Americans: A Participatory Study.

Background: Cigarette smoking rates have decreased in the United States, particularly in California. Despite representing a large population in the United States and particularly in California, Arab Americans are not typically assessed in tobacco-related health studies. Disparately high smoking rates have been found in community samples of Arab Americans.

Impacts of confounding roadway characteristics on estimates of associations between alcohol outlet densities and alcohol-related motor vehicle crashes.

Introduction And Aims: Previous research on alcohol-related motor vehicle crashes (AMVC) share a substantial limitation: sources of geographic variations in background crash risks may confound estimated spatial relationships between alcohol outlets and AMVCs. The aim of this study was to address this concern by examining, spatial-temporally, relationships between alcohol outlets and AMVCs adjusting for a set of six roadway characteristics that may be, independently, related to crash risks. While most similar studies focus on one metropolitan area, we use a unique sample of 50 cities.

Space-Time Analyses of Alcohol Outlets and Related Motor Vehicle Crashes: Associations at City and Census Block-Group Levels.

Background: Past research has linked alcohol outlet densities to drinking, drunken driving, and alcohol-related motor vehicle crashes (MVCs). Because impaired drivers travel some distances from drinking places to crash locations, spatial relationships between outlets and crashes are complex. We investigate these relationships at 3 geographic levels: census block groups (CBGs), adjacent (nearby) areas, and whole cities.

A Spatial Analysis of Heterogeneity in the Link Between Alcohol Outlets and Assault Victimization: Differences Across Victim Subpopulations.

The positive association between alcohol outlet density and assault rates is well established, but little is known about how this association differs across victim subpopulations. We use spatial point process models on police data from Flint, Michigan, to test how the link between alcohol outlet density and assault rates changes as a function of three victim characteristics: age, gender, and race. We found that, although both on-premises and package outlet densities consistently emerge as risk factors for victimization, their relative effects are markedly larger in Whites than in African Americans.

Patient- and Community-Level Sociodemographic Characteristics Associated with Emergency Department Visits for Childhood Injury.

Objective: To examine pediatric emergency department (ED) visits over 5 years, trends in injury severity, and associations between injury-related ED visit outcome and patient and community-level sociodemographic characteristics.

Study Design: Retrospective analysis of administrative data provided to the Pediatric Emergency Care Applied Research Network Core Data Project, 2004-2008. Home addresses were geocoded to determine census block group and associated sociodemographic characteristics.

The Effect of Neighborhood Context on the Relationship Between Substance Misuse and Weapons Aggression in Urban Adolescents Seeking ED Care.

Background: Frameworks for studying the ecology of human behavior suggest that multiple levels of the environment influence behavior and that these levels interact. Applied to studies of weapons aggression, this suggests proximal risk factor (e.g.

Changes in body mass index associated with head start participation.

Objectives: The goal of this study was to determine if Head Start participation is associated with healthy changes in BMI.

Methods: The sample included children participating in Head Start between 2005 and 2013 and children from 2 comparison groups drawn from a Michigan primary care health system: 5405 receiving Medicaid and 19,320 not receiving Medicaid. Change in BMI z score from the beginning to the end of each of 2 academic years and the intervening summer was compared between groups by using piecewise linear mixed models adjusted for age, gender, and race/ethnicity.

Health care system hazard vulnerability analysis: an assessment of all public hospitals in Abu Dhabi.

Hazard vulnerability analysis (HVA) is used to risk-stratify potential threats, measure the probability of those threats, and guide disaster preparedness. The primary objective of this project was to analyse the level of disaster preparedness in public hospitals in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, utilising the HVA tool in collaboration with the Disaster Medicine Section at Harvard Medical School. The secondary objective was to review each facility's disaster plan and make recommendations based on the HVA findings.

The geography of violence, alcohol outlets, and drug arrests in Boston.

Objectives: We examined the relationship between alcohol outlets, drug markets (approximated by arrests for possession and trafficking), and violence in Boston, Massachusetts, in 2006. We analyzed geographic and environmental versus individual factors related to violence and identified areas high in violent crime.

Methods: We used data from the Boston Police Department, US Census, and Massachusetts State Alcohol Beverage Control Commission.

Quality of publications in emergency medicine.

Objective: The objective of this study is to describe emergency medicine (EM) publications in terms of methodology, approval by institutional review board, method of consent, external validity, and setting (eg, prehospital or emergency department).

Methods: The 12 top-ranked emergency journals were selected. We manually reviewed the last 30 original articles in each EM journal, to represent more than 2 months of publications for all EM journals (range, 2-6 months).

Emergency department crowding and risk of preventable medical errors.

The objective of the study is to determine the association between emergency department (ED) crowding and preventable medical errors (PME). This was a retrospective cohort study of 533 ED patients enrolled in the National ED Safety Study (NEDSS) in four Massachusetts EDs. Individual patients' average exposure to ED crowding during their ED visit was compared with the occurrence of a PME (yes/no) for the three diagnostic categories in NEDSS: acute myocardial infarction, asthma exacerbation, and dislocation requiring procedural sedation.

Public health education for emergency medicine residents.

Emergency medicine (EM) has an important role in public health, but the ideal approach for teaching public health to EM residents is unclear. As part of the national Regional Public Health-Medicine Education Centers-Graduate Medical Education initiative from the CDC and the American Association of Medical Colleges, three EM programs received funding to create public health curricula for EM residents. Curricula approaches varied by residency.

Emergency department utilization after the implementation of Massachusetts health reform.

Study Objective: Health care reform in Massachusetts improved access to health insurance, but the extent to which reform affected utilization of the emergency department (ED) for conditions potentially amenable to primary care is unclear. Our objective is to determine the relationship between health reform and ED use for low-severity conditions.

Methods: We studied ED visits, using a convenience sample of 11 Massachusetts hospitals for identical 9-month periods before and after health care reform legislation was implemented in 2006.

Patterns of sexual violence in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo: reports from survivors presenting to Panzi Hospital in 2006.

Background: Despite the signing of international peace agreements, a deadly war continues in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and sexual violence is a prominent modus operandi of many military groups operating in the region.

Methods: Retrospective cohort study of women who presented to Panzi Hospital in 2006 requesting post-sexual violence care. Data was extracted and analyzed to describe the patterns of sexual violence.

Emergency department use by the uninsured after health care reform in Massachusetts.

The objective of this article is to determine if health care reform in Massachusetts in 2006 was associated with a change in ED utilization by the uninsured for asthma and upper respiratory tract infection (URI). We performed a retrospective pre-post study in an urban tertiary-care teaching hospital. Subjects included all patients, ages 2-54, who presented to the ED with asthma or URI from January 1 to July 31 for each of the 3 years before health care reform and for the period after the insurance mandate officially went into effect on January 1, 2008.

Changes in alcohol consumption and drinking patterns during 11 years of follow-up among ageing men: the FinDrink study.

Background: Alcohol consumption is often reported to decrease with ageing. We investigated alcohol consumption and drinking patterns in an ageing population-based male sample during an 11-year follow-up period.

Methods: This study with baseline and two follow-up examinations (at 4 and 11 years) included 1516 randomly selected participants, aged 42, 48, 54 and 60 years from Eastern Finland.

Alcohol use among two generations of Southeast Asians in the United States.

This article assesses the drinking norms and practices of two generations of Southeast Asians in the East San Francisco Bay Area. Researchers included quantity and frequency measures of current alcohol use and binge drinking and open-ended questions on drinking norms and behaviors in a mixed-method study of tobacco use. The study generated data through in-person interviews with 164 respondents from two urban East Bay neighborhoods.

The spatial distribution of underage tobacco sales in Los Angeles.

Objective: Underage tobacco sales is considered a serious public health problem in Los Angeles. Anecdotally, rates have been thought to be quite high. In this paper, using spatial statistical techniques, we describe underage tobacco sales, identifying areas with high levels of sales and hot spots controlling for sociodemographic measures.

Smoking and all-cause mortality among a cohort of urban transit operators.

This study assesses the contribution of smoking to all-cause mortality among a primarily minority cohort of urban transit operators. Survey and medical exam data, obtained from 1,785 workers (61% African American; 9% female) who participated in the 1983-1985 San Francisco MUNI Health and Safety Study, were matched against state and national death records through 2000. At baseline, approximately 45% of the workers were current smokers, 30% were former smokers, and 25% had never smoked.

The geography of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease across time: California in 1993 and 1999.

We investigated changes in the geography of Chronic Obstructuve Pulmonary Disease (COPD) hospitalization charges in California over the period of 1993 and 1999. There is little information available at less than the county level for this increasingly costly disease in California. We found, using a uniform grid unit method, (4X4 and 16X16 mile urban and rural grids respectively, using zip codes as the base source for information) positive relationships between COPD charges and age, percentage Hispanics, and number of tobacco outlets.

Latitude-of-birth and season-of-birth effects on human color vision in the Arctic.

Extreme natural ambient light reduction, in both energy and range of wavelength spectrum, occurs during the winter season at very high latitudes (above the Arctic Circle or 66 degrees 32' North) that in turn results in increased exposure to artificial lighting. In contrast, during the summer months, the sun remains above the horizon and there is no darkness or night. Little is known about these extreme changes in light exposure on human visual perception.

The geography of COPD hospitalization in California.

Exposure to tobacco smoke is an important risk factor for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. We investigated the relationship between chronic obstructive pulmonary disease hospitalization counts (and hospitalization-related charges) in California and sociodemographic and smoking measures, employing geospatial techniques that permit more sensitive scrutiny at the zip code level while controlling for spatial confounding. We analyzed 1,707 zip code tabulation areas in California for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease hospitalization rates and related hospitalization charges (using 1999 hospital discharge data).