Internet use, browsing, and the urban poor: implications for cancer control.

Background: Despite the growing penetration of the Internet, little is known about the usage and browsing patterns of those in poverty. We report on a randomized controlled trial that sheds light on the Internet use and browsing patterns among the urban poor.

Methods: The data come from 312 participants in Boston, Massachusetts, from Click to Connect, a study that examined the impact of an intervention that provided computers, Internet, and training to people from lower socioeconomic position (SEP).

Comment on "Estimating False Discovery Proportion Under Arbitrary Covariance Dependence" by Fan et al.

Accurate estimation of the false discovery proportion (FDP) and false discovery rate (FDR) is a problem that has been eagerly waiting for a solution. Fan, Han and Gu have found one. They have achieved this by both clarifying the concept of the problem and providing a feasible algorithmic solution.

Humanitarian relief workers and trauma-related mental illness.

Humanitarian relief work is a growing field characterized by ongoing exposure to primary and secondary trauma, which has implications for workers' occupational mental health. This paper reviews and summarizes research to date on mental health effects of relief work. Twelve studies on relief workers and 5 studies on organizations that employ relief workers are examined to determine whether relief work is a risk factor for trauma-related mental illness.

MULTIPLE TESTING OF LOCAL MAXIMA FOR DETECTION OF PEAKS IN 1D.

A topological multiple testing scheme for one-dimensional domains is proposed where, rather than testing every spatial or temporal location for the presence of a signal, tests are performed only at the local maxima of the smoothed observed sequence. Assuming unimodal true peaks with finite support and Gaussian stationary ergodic noise, it is shown that the algorithm with Bonferroni or Benjamini-Hochberg correction provides asymptotic strong control of the family wise error rate and false discovery rate, and is power consistent, as the search space and the signal strength get large, where the search space may grow exponentially faster than the signal strength. Simulations show that error levels are maintained for nonasymptotic conditions, and that power is maximized when the smoothing kernel is close in shape and bandwidth to the signal peaks, akin to the matched filter theorem in signal processing.

Prevalence and implications of multiple cancer screening needs among Hispanic community health center patients.

Objectives: To examine adherence rates for multiple cancer screening tests, which will inform prevention efforts in community health centers (CHCs).

Methods: We report on the prevalence of screening for multiple cancers (cervical, breast and colorectal) among 43,000 patients who are predominantly Hispanic, in four CHC sites that share an integrated electronic medical record.

Results: Among the 20,057 patients eligible for at least one test, 43% of the population was current on all screening targets; 15,887 additional screening tests were needed among 11,526 individuals.

Group Comparison of Eigenvalues and Eigenvectors of Diffusion Tensors.

Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) data differ from most medical images in that values at each voxel are not scalars, but 3 × 3 symmetric positive definite matrices called diffusion tensors (DTs). The anatomic characteristics of the tissue at each voxel are reflected by the DT eigenvalues and eigenvectors. In this article we consider the problem of testing whether the means of two groups of DT images are equal at each voxel in terms of the DT's eigenvalues, eigenvectors, or both.

The role of reported tobacco-specific media exposure on adult attitudes towards proposed policies to limit the portrayal of smoking in movies.

Objective: To assess the relative, independent contribution of reported tobacco-specific media exposure (pro-tobacco advertising, anti-tobacco advertising, and news coverage of tobacco issues) to US adults' support for policy efforts that aim to regulate the portrayal of smoking in movies.

Methods: Using the American Legacy Foundation's 2003 American Smoking and Health Survey (ASHES-2), multivariable logistic regression was used to model the predicted probability that US adults support movie-specific tobacco control policies, by reported exposure to tobacco-specific media messages, controlling for smoking status, education, income, race/ethnicity, age, sex, knowledge of the negative effects of tobacco and state.

Results: Across most outcome variables under study, findings reveal that reported exposure to tobacco-specific media messages is associated with adult attitudes towards movie-specific policy measures.

A robust method for finely stratified familial studies with proband-based sampling.

This paper presents a robust method to conduct inference in finely stratified familial studies under proband-based sampling. We assume that the interest is in both the marginal effects of subject-specific covariates on a binary response and the familial aggregation of the response, as quantified by intrafamilial pairwise odds ratios. We adopt an estimating function for proband-based family studies originally developed by Zhao and others (1998) in the context of an unstratified design and treat the stratification effects as fixed nuisance parameters.

Mutuality at the center: health promotion with Cape Verdean immigrant women.

Objective: Public health care researchers, policy makers, and providers are increasingly interested in developing more effective and culturally responsive health promotion theories and interventions for diverse immigrant populations. The purpose of this study was to develop health promotion theory that validates the local knowledge and experiences of Cape Verdean women health promoters who work with immigrant women in their community.

Design: In-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with nine culturally savvy, community-based Cape Verdean women health promoters about their perspectives and daily experiences of health promotion practice with Cape Verdean immigrant women.

Semiparametric Maximum Likelihood Estimation in Normal Transformation Models for Bivariate Survival Data.

We consider a class of semiparametric normal transformation models for right censored bivariate failure times. Nonparametric hazard rate models are transformed to a standard normal model and a joint normal distribution is assumed for the bivariate vector of transformed variates. A semiparametric maximum likelihood estimation procedure is developed for estimating the marginal survival distribution and the pairwise correlation parameters.

Long-term smoking cessation outcomes among childhood cancer survivors in the Partnership for Health Study.

Purpose: Partnership for Health (PFH) was found to increase smoking cessation among smokers in the Childhood Cancer Survivors Study (CCSS) at the 8- and 12-month postbaseline follow-up. This report provides outcomes at 2 to 6 years postbaseline; the primary outcome is a four-category smoking status variable (quit at all follow-ups, quit at final follow-up only, smoker at all follow-ups, and smoker at final follow-up only); quit attempts among those who reported smoking at the final follow-up is a secondary outcome.

Methods: PFH was a randomized control trial with two conditions, peer phone counseling (PC) and self-help (SH), that involved smokers (n = 796) enrolled in the CCSS cohort.

Empirical null and false discovery rate analysis in neuroimaging.

Current strategies for thresholding statistical parametric maps in neuroimaging include control of the family-wise error rate, control of the false discovery rate (FDR) and thresholding of the posterior probability of a voxel being active given the data, the latter derived from a mixture model of active and inactive voxels. Correct inference using any of these criteria depends crucially on the specification of the null distribution of the test statistics. In this article we show examples from fMRI and DTI data where the theoretical null distribution does not match well the observed distribution of the test statistics.

MULTI-CENTER CLINICAL TRIALS: RANDOMIZATION AND ANCILLARY STATISTICS.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate and develop methods for analysis of multi-center randomized clinical trials which only rely on the randomization process as a basis of inference. Our motivation is prompted by the fact that most current statistical procedures used in the analysis of randomized multi-center studies are model based. The randomization feature of the trials is usually ignored.

Comparing trends in cancer rates across overlapping regions.

Monitoring and comparing trends in cancer rates across geographic regions or over different time periods have been major tasks of the National Cancer Institute's (NCI) Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) Program as it profiles healthcare quality as well as decides healthcare resource allocations within a spatial-temporal framework. A fundamental difficulty, however, arises when such comparisons have to be made for regions or time intervals that overlap, for example, comparing the change in trends of mortality rates in a local area (e.g.

A proportional hazards cure model for the analysis of time to event with frequently unidentifiable causes.

We propose a semiparametric method for the analysis of masked-cause failure data that are also subject to a cure. We present estimators for the failure time distribution, the cure rate, and the covariate effect on each of these, assuming a proportional hazards cure model for the time to event of interest and we use the expectation-maximization algorithm to conduct the likelihood maximization. The method is applied to data from a breast cancer clinical trial.

Immigration and obesity among lower income blacks.

Objective: Our objective was to examine the associations of nativity, immigrant generation, and language acculturation with obesity among lower income black adult men and women.

Research Methods And Procedures: Data from 551 black adult men and women were collected from participants in the Healthy Directions-Health Centers Study. Race/ethnicity and nativity were self-reported.

Does race/ethnicity moderate the association between job strain and leisure time physical activity?

Background: Racial/ethnic minorities report myriad barriers to regular leisure time physical activity (LTPA), including the stress and fatigue resulting from their occupational activities.

Purpose: We sought to investigate whether an association exists between job strain and LTPA, and whether it is modified by race or ethnicity.

Methods: Data were collected from 1,740 adults employed in 26 small manufacturing businesses in eastern Massachusetts.

Social influences, social context, and health behaviors among working-class, multi-ethnic adults.

Little research has explored the relationship between social influences (e.g., social networks, social support, social norms) and health as related to modifying factors that may contribute to health disparities.

Generalization of the Mantel-Haenszel estimating function for sparse clustered binary data.

We extend the Mantel-Haenszel estimating function to estimate both the intra-cluster pairwise correlation and the main effects for sparse clustered binary data. We propose both a composite likelihood approach and an estimating function approach for the analysis of such data. The proposed estimators are consistent and asymptotically normally distributed.

Peer-delivered smoking counseling for childhood cancer survivors increases rate of cessation: the partnership for health study.

Purpose: Cancer survivors smoke at rates that are only slightly lower than the general population. This article reports on the final outcomes of Partnership for Health, a smoking cessation intervention for smokers in the Childhood Cancer Survivors Study (CCSS).

Methods: This study is a randomized control trial with follow-up at 8 and 12 months that involved smokers (n = 796) enrolled onto the CCSS cohort.

Cancer prevention among working class, multiethnic adults: results of the healthy directions-health centers study.

Objectives: We analyzed outcomes from a study that examined social-contextual factors in cancer prevention interventions for working class, multiethnic populations.

Methods: Ten community health centers were randomized to intervention or to control. Patients who resided in low-income, multiethnic neighborhoods were eligible; the intervention targeted fruit and vegetable consumption, red meat consumption, multivitamin intake, and physical activity.

Perceived racial/ethnic harassment and tobacco use among African American young adults.

We examined the association between perceived racial/ethnic harassment and tobacco use in 2129 African American college students in North Carolina. Age-adjusted and multivariate analyses evaluated the effect of harassment on daily and less-than-daily tobacco use. Harassed participants were twice as likely to use tobacco daily (odds ratio = 2.

A semiparametric method for analyzing matched case-control family studies with a continuous outcome and proband sampling.

We consider matched case-control familial studies which match a group of patients, called "case probands," with a group of disease-free subjects, called "control probands," using a set of family-level matching variables. Family members of each proband are then recruited into the study. Of interest here is the familial aggregation of the response variable and the effects of subject-specific covariates on the response.