62 research outputs found
Hispanic physicians' tobacco intervention practices: a cross-sectional survey study
BACKGROUND: U.S. Hispanic physicians constitute a considerable professional collective, and they may be most suited to attend to the health education needs of the growing U.S. Hispanic population. These educational needs include tobacco use prevention and smoking cessation. However, there is a lack of information on Hispanic physicians' tobacco intervention practices, their level of awareness and use of cessation protocols, and the type of programs that would best address their tobacco training needs. The purpose of this study was to assess the tobacco intervention practices and training needs of Hispanic physicians. METHODS: Data was collected through a validated survey instrument among a cross-sectional sample of self-reported Hispanic physicians. Data analyses included frequencies, descriptive statistics, and factorial analyses of variance. RESULTS: The response rate was 55.5%. The majority of respondents (73.3%) were middle-age males. Less than half of respondents routinely performed the most basic intervention: asking patients about smoking status (44.4%) and advising smoking patients to quit (42.2%). Twenty-five percent assisted smoking patients by talking to them about the health risks of smoking, providing education materials or referring them to cessation programs. Only 4.4% routinely arranged follow-up visits or phone calls for smoking patients. The majority of respondents (64.4%) indicated that they prescribe cessation treatments to less than 20% of smoking patients. A few (4.4%) routinely used behavioral change techniques or programs. A minority (15.6%) indicated that they routinely ask their patients about exposure to tobacco smoke, and 6.7% assisted patients exposed to secondhand smoke in understanding the health risks associated with environmental tobacco smoke (ETS). The most frequently encountered barriers preventing respondents from intervening with patients who smoke included: time, lack of training, lack of receptivity by patients, and lack of reimbursement by third party payers. There was no significant main effect of type of physician, nor was there an interaction effect (gender by type of physician), on tobacco-related practices. CONCLUSION: The results indicate that Hispanic physicians, similarly to U.S. physicians in general, do not meet the level of intervention recommended by health care agencies. The results presented will assist in the development of tobacco training initiatives for Hispanic physicians
Correlates of tobacco cessation counseling among Hispanic physicians in the US: a cross-sectional survey study.
BACKGROUND: Physician advice is an important motivator for attempting to stop smoking. However, physicians\u27 lack of intervention with smokers has only modestly improved in the last decade. Although the literature includes extensive research in the area of the smoking intervention practices of clinicians, few studies have focused on Hispanic physicians. The purpose of this study was to explore the correlates of tobacco cessation counseling practices among Hispanic physicians in the US.
METHODS: Data were collected through a validated survey instrument among a cross-sectional sample of self-reported Hispanic physicians practicing in New Mexico, and who were members of the New Mexico Hispanic Medical Society in the year 2001. Domains of interest included counseling practices, self-efficacy, attitudes/responsibility, and knowledge/skills. Returned surveys were analyzed to obtain frequencies and descriptive statistics for each survey item. Other analyses included: bivariate Pearson\u27s correlation, factorial ANOVAs, and multiple linear regressions.
RESULTS: Respondents (n = 45) reported a low level of compliance with tobacco control guidelines and recommendations. Results indicate that physicians\u27 familiarity with standard cessation protocols has a significant effect on their tobacco-related practices (r = .35, variance shared = 12%). Self-efficacy and gender were both significantly correlated to tobacco related practices (r = .42, variance shared = 17%). A significant correlation was also found between self-efficacy and knowledge/skills (r = .60, variance shared = 36%). Attitudes/responsibility was not significantly correlated with any of the other measures.
CONCLUSION: More resources should be dedicated to training Hispanic physicians in tobacco intervention. Training may facilitate practice by increasing knowledge, developing skills and, ultimately, enhancing feelings of self-efficacy
Geographical, seasonal, and depth variation in sinking particle speeds in the North Atlantic
Particle sinking velocity is considered to be a controlling factor for carbon transport to the deep sea and thus carbon sequestration in the oceans. The velocities of the material exported to depth are considered to be high in high-latitude productive systems and low in oligotrophic distributions. We use a recently developed method based on the measurement of the radioactive pair 210Po-210Pb to calculate particle sinking velocities in the temperate and oligotrophic North Atlantic during different bloom stages. Our estimates of average sinking velocities (ASVs) show that slowly sinking particles (<100?m?d?1) contribute significantly to carbon flux at all the locations except in the temperate regions during the bloom. ASVs appear to vary strongly with season, which we propose is caused by changes in the epipelagic community structure. Our results are the first field data to confirm the long-standing theory that particle sinking velocities increase with depth, with increases of up to 90% between 50 and 150?m depth
Why Reform Fails : The ‘Politics of Policies’ in Costa Rican Telecommunications Liberalization
As the \u27Washington Consensus\u27 reforms are losing momentum in Latin America, the Inter-
American Development Bank (IDB) is calling for shifting the focus from the content of policy
choices to the political process of their implementation. As this paper studies the paradigmatic
case of telecommunications reform in Costa Rica it underscores the importance
of these \u27politics of policies\u27. The analysis finds, however, that the failure of repeated liberalization
initiatives was not only due to policy-makers\u27 errors in steering the project
through \u27the messy world of politics\u27 (IDB); instead, as liberalization remained unpopular,
policy content indeed mattered, and only the interaction of both explains the outcome.
Particular attention is drawn to the political feed-back effects, as the failed reform, precisely
because it had been backed by bi-partisan support, became a catalyst for the disintegration
of the country\u27s long-standing two-party system.In dem Maße, in dem die mit dem „Washington Consensus“ verbundenen Reformen in Lateinamerika
ins Stocken geraten sind, plädiert die Inter-American Development Bank (IDB)
für eine stärkere Berücksichtigung nicht nur der Politikinhalte (policies), sondern auch des
politischen Prozesses von deren Umsetzung (politics). Die vorliegende Untersuchung zum
paradigmatischen Fall der Reform des Telekommunikationssektors in Costa Rica unterstreicht
die Bedeutung dieser „politics of policies“. Sie zeigt allerdings auch, dass Ursache
für das Scheiten wiederholter Liberalisierungsinitiativen nicht nur Fehler der Politiker sind,
das Vorhaben durch „die unordentliche Welt der politics“ (IDB) zu steuern. Die breite gesellschaftliche
Opposition gegen den Liberalisierungskurs bleibt. Nur die Interaktion von beiden,
politics und policies, erklärt Verlauf und Ergebnis der Reform. Besonderes Augenmerk
widmet die Studie den politischen Rückwirkungen der gescheiterten Reform: Sie wurde,
just weil sie von beiden etablierten Parteien unterstützt wurde, zum Katalysator für den Zerfall
des seit Jahrzehnten etablierten Zweiparteiensystems des Landes
Geographical, seasonal, and depth variation in sinking particle speeds in the North Atlantic
Missed opportunities for tobacco use screening and brief cessation advice in South African primary health care: a cross-sectional study
A Self-Organizing Algorithm for Modeling Protein Loops
Protein loops, the flexible short segments connecting two stable secondary
structural units in proteins, play a critical role in protein structure and
function. Constructing chemically sensible conformations of protein loops that
seamlessly bridge the gap between the anchor points without introducing any
steric collisions remains an open challenge. A variety of algorithms have been
developed to tackle the loop closure problem, ranging from inverse kinematics to
knowledge-based approaches that utilize pre-existing fragments extracted from
known protein structures. However, many of these approaches focus on the
generation of conformations that mainly satisfy the fixed end point condition,
leaving the steric constraints to be resolved in subsequent post-processing
steps. In the present work, we describe a simple solution that simultaneously
satisfies not only the end point and steric conditions, but also chirality and
planarity constraints. Starting from random initial atomic coordinates, each
individual conformation is generated independently by using a simple alternating
scheme of pairwise distance adjustments of randomly chosen atoms, followed by
fast geometric matching of the conformationally rigid components of the
constituent amino acids. The method is conceptually simple, numerically stable
and computationally efficient. Very importantly, additional constraints, such as
those derived from NMR experiments, hydrogen bonds or salt bridges, can be
incorporated into the algorithm in a straightforward and inexpensive way, making
the method ideal for solving more complex multi-loop problems. The remarkable
performance and robustness of the algorithm are demonstrated on a set of protein
loops of length 4, 8, and 12 that have been used in previous studies
Global patterns and drivers of ecosystem functioning in rivers and riparian zones
River ecosystems receive and process vast quantities of terrestrial organic carbon, the fate of which depends strongly on microbial activity. Variation in and controls of processing rates, however, are poorly characterized at the global scale. In response, we used a peer-sourced research network and a highly standardized carbon processing assay to conduct a global-scale field experiment in greater than 1000 river and riparian sites. We found that Earth's biomes have distinct carbon processing signatures. Slow processing is evident across latitudes, whereas rapid rates are restricted to lower latitudes. Both the mean rate and variability decline with latitude, suggesting temperature constraints toward the poles and greater roles for other environmental drivers (e.g., nutrient loading) toward the equator. These results and data set the stage for unprecedented "next-generation biomonitoring" by establishing baselines to help quantify environmental impacts to the functioning of ecosystems at a global scale.peerReviewe
An international review of tobacco smoking in the medical profession: 1974–2004
Background\ud
Tobacco smoking by physicians represents a contentious issue in public health, and regardless of what country it originates from, the need for accurate, historical data is paramount. As such, this article provides an international comparison of all modern literature describing the tobacco smoking habits of contemporary physicians.\ud
\ud
Methods\ud
A keyword search of appropriate MeSH terms was initially undertaken to identify relevant material, after which the reference lists of manuscripts were also examined to locate further publications.\ud
\ud
Results\ud
A total of 81 English-language studies published in the past 30 years met the inclusion criteria. Two distinct trends were evident. Firstly, most developed countries have shown a steady decline in physicians' smoking rates during recent years. On the other hand, physicians in some developed countries and newly-developing regions still appear to be smoking at high rates. The lowest smoking prevalence rates were consistently documented in the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom. Comparison with other health professionals suggests that fewer physicians smoke when compared to nurses, and sometimes less often than dentists.\ud
\ud
Conclusion\ud
Overall, this review suggests that while physicians' smoking habits appear to vary from region to region, they are not uniformly low when viewed from an international perspective. It is important that smoking in the medical profession declines in future years, so that physicians can remain at the forefront of anti-smoking programs and lead the way as public health exemplars in the 21st century
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