Parental Monitoring of Computer Use and its Association with Drug Use among Students in Southern Brazil.

Background: Parental control is considered important in preventing drug use among adolescents.

Objective: This study aimed to explore the association between the perception of parental monitoring of computer use and drug use among adolescent students.

Methods: A cross-sectional school-based study was conducted in 2012 among 2,980 students aged 12-17 years from Southern Brazil.

School health promotion and use of drugs among students in Southern Brazil.

Objective: To analyze the relationship between the health promotion conditions in schools and the consumption of alcohol and other drugs by students.

Methods: This is a cross-sectional study with a probabilistic sample of 3,464 students aged 12 to 17 from all schools of the cities of Lajeado and Sapiranga, state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, and 53 managers from the same schools; the data was collected in 2012. Reports of the use of tobacco, alcohol, and illicit drugs in 2012 were used as outcomes, and the health promotion score in the school environment was used as the exposure of interest.

[Conditions associated with impaired social skills in a convenience sample of crack users].

The article analyzes conditions associated with low scores on the Social Skills Inventory (SSI) among crack users in Greater Metropolitan Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul State, Brazil, based on a cross-sectional study in a convenience sample of 519 individuals interviewed in 2011. Low SSI scores occurred in 52.8% of the sample, and there were no differences according to currently active use of crack (yes/no) or current addiction treatment.

Validation of an instrument to evaluate health promotion at schools.

Objective: To validate an instrument designed to assess health promotion in the school environment.

Methods: A questionnaire, based on guidelines from the World Health Organization and in line with the Brazilian school health context, was developed to validate the research instrument. There were 60 items in the instrument that included 40 questions for the school manager and 20 items with direct observations made by the interviewer.

[Characteristics of primary healthcare service use in the southern and northeastern regions of Brazil: differences by care model].

In view of the emphasis on primary care for the health system and the consolidation of Family Healthcare Strategy, it is important that information on attended demand be updated to assist in administration of the Unified Health System (UHS). The study compared the profile of attended demand in basic healthcare units (BHU) of two care models (traditional and family health) in 240 BHU of seven states of the South and the Northeast. Collected on a prepared form, all patients attended in a single day were processed with the PACOTAPS application.

[Epidemiological and socio-demographic profile of primary care workers in the South and Northeast of Brazil].

In order to describe the profile of primary health care teams in 41 municipalities with more than 100 thousand inhabitants each, a total of 4,749 health workers in two States from the South (1,730) and five from the Northeast (3,019) of Brazil were included from a sample of traditional primary care units and the Family Health Program (FHP). After providing informed consent, the health workers answered a self-applied questionnaire with demographic, work-related, and their own health-related data. The principal differences between the two models involved the structuring of the teams, with the FHP including more community health agents, more women, more young workers, fewer hired on the basis of formal admissions exams, more with a single job, more precarious employment arrangements, less employment satisfaction, less time on the job, larger workloads, greater specialization in the area, and better pay.

[Evaluation of the effectiveness of Primary Health Care in South and Northeast Brazil: methodological contributions].

The article presents the methodology used in the Baseline Study that evaluated the effectiveness of the Family Health Strategy as compared to traditional primary health care units. The study included 41 municipalities with more than 100 thousand inhabitants each, 21 from the South and 20 from the Northeast of Brazil. As the principal dependent variable and underlying premise for sampling in the Baseline Study, the effectiveness of program activities in the primary care units was analyzed in the population within the respective coverage areas, using an epidemiological survey.