Effect of Indian women’s exposure to warning messages on intention to quit smokeless tobacco

Background: Media campaigns have been shown to affect intention to quit the use of smoked tobacco and quit behaviour among men. However, despite warning messages on tobacco packages and delivered via mass media, such campaigns have had limited reach and effect on women’s use of smokeless tobacco (SLT) and SLT use among Indian women is increasing. This paper explores the association between selected warning messages conveyed through different media mechanisms and intention to quit smokeless tobacco among women of reproductive age in Mumbai.Methods: A cross-sectional community survey was conducted in a representative sample of 409 daily smokeless tobacco (SLT) women users aged 18- 40 years in a low-income community in Mumbai during 2011-2012. The paper utilizes information on socio-demographic characteristics, types of tobacco use, exposure to different types of warning messages and intention to quit collected through a researcher-administered structured questionnaire. Univariate and bivariate analysis were carried out to examine the influence of warning messages on intention to quit SLT use.Results: Half of the women correctly interpreted the image of scorpion on the SLT product as ‘causing cancer’. About 36% women were exposed to warning messages on television and 67% of women intended to quit SLT. Correct interpretation of the significance of the scorpion sign on SLT packets was not significantly associated with intention to quit SLT use. However, the likelihood of intention to quit was significantly higher among those who were exposed to warning messages on television than their counterparts.Conclusions: Since anti-tobacco campaigns on television were significantly associated with the intention to quit but warnings on package tobacco were not, expansion of anti-tobacco messaging on television targeted and tailored to women should further increase quit intentions and over time, with effective cessation programs in place, have an impact on quit behaviour

Risk and Protective Factors for Drug Use Among Polydrug-Using Urban Youth and Young Adults

The purpose of the study was to examine the influence of traditional risk and protective factors for drug use on six different popular drugs on a population that is primarily Black and Latino between the ages of 16 and 24. Multiple regression analysis was used to test the relative importance of risk and protective indexes, and their interaction, in predicting drug use. Findings suggested: (a) traditional risk and protective factors, as well as situationally specific factors such as gang involvement, predicted drug use; and(b) the relative contribution of risk and protective factors toward explained variances differs substantially among the drug outcomes. Thus, risk and protective factors may be operating differently for different drugs, indicating that more research is needed into the meanings associated with the use of particular drugs and the factors that may make youth vulnerable to some drugs but not others

Multilevel drivers of human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immune deficiency syndrome among black Philadelphians: Exploration using community ethnography and geographic information systems

Background: Unequal human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)/acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) distribution is influenced by certain social and structural contexts that facilitate HIV transmission and concentrate HIV in disease epicenters. Thus, one of the first steps in designing effective community-level HIV/AIDS initiatives is to disentangle the influence of individual, social, and structural factors on HIV risk. Combining ethnographic methodology with geographic information systems mapping can allow for a complex exploration of multilevel factors within communities that facilitate HIV transmission in highly affected areas. Objectives: We present the formative comparative community-based case study findings of an investigation of individual-, social-, and structural-level factors that contribute to the HIV/AIDS epidemic among Black Philadelphians. Methods: Communities were defined using census tracts. The methodology included ethnographic and geographic information systems mapping, observation, informal conversations with residents and business owners, and secondary analyses of census tract-level data in four Philadelphia neighborhoods. Results: Factors such as overcrowding, disadvantage, permeability in community boundaries, and availability and accessibility of health-related resources varied significantly. Furthermore, HIV/AIDS trended with social and structural inequities above and beyond the community's racial composition. Discussion: This study was a first step to disentangle relationships between community-level factors and potential risk for HIV in an HIV epicenter. The findings also highlight stark sociodemographic differences within and across racial groups and further substantiate the need for comprehensive, community-level HIV prevention interventions. These findings from targeted U.S. urban communities have potential applicability for examining the distribution of HIV/AIDS in broader national and international geosocial contexts

Statistical Power of Alternative Structural Models for Comparative Effectiveness Research: Advantages of Modeling Unreliability

The advantages of modeling the unreliability of outcomes when evaluating the comparative effectiveness of health interventions is illustrated. Adding an action-research intervention component to a regular summer job program for youth was expected to help in preventing risk behaviors. A series of simple two-group alternative structural equation models are compared to test the effect of the intervention on one key attitudinal outcome in terms of model fit and statistical power with Monte Carlo simulations. Some models presuming parameters equal across the intervention and comparison groups were under- powered to detect the intervention effect, yet modeling the unreliability of the outcome measure increased their statistical power and helped in the detection of the hypothesized effect. Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER) could benefit from flexible multi- group alternative structural models organized in decision trees, and modeling unreliability of measures can be of tremendous help for both the fit of statistical models to the data and their statistical power

Visual Narratives: Exploring the Impacts of Tourism Development in Placencia, Belize

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/156219/2/napa12135_am.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/156219/1/napa12135.pd

Understanding vaccine hesitancy through communities of place

This UK-US collaborative study examining vaccine engagement highlights the importance of tapping into local knowledge and leadership in efforts to improve Covid-19 vaccine take-up. It explores levels of vaccine engagement in four locations: Oldham and Tower Hamlets in the UK, and the cities of Boston and Hartford in the US

Mapping social networks, spatial data and hidden populations

Includes bibliographical references and indexAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:m03/31312 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreSIGLEGBUnited Kingdo

Essential ethnographic methods: observations, interviews, and questionnaires

xxiii, 318 hl

LeCompte, Margaret D., and Jean J. Schensul, Designing and Conducting Ethnographic Research. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press, 1999.

Provides an overview of steps and procedures in doing ethnographic research; five related books from the same authors and publisher cover the same ground in more detail

Identifying the intersection of alcohol, adherence and sex in HIV positive men on ART treatment in India using an adapted timeline followback procedure

People living with HIV (PLHIV) on anti-retroviral treatment (ART) who drink are less adherent and more likely to engage in unprotected sex but the connections among these events are correlational. Using an adapted Timeline Follow-Back (A-TLFB) procedure, this paper examines the day by day interface of alcohol, medication adherence and sex to provide a fine grained understanding of how multiple behavioral risks coincide in time and space, explores concordance/discordance of measures with survey data and identifies potential recall bias. Data are drawn from a survey of behavior, knowledge and attitudes, and a 30 day TLFB assessment of multiple risk behaviors adapted for the Indian PLHIV context, administered to 940 alcohol-consuming, HIV positive men on ART at the baseline evaluation stage of a multilevel, multi-centric intervention study. On days participants drank they were significantly more likely to be medication non-adherent and to have unprotected sex. In the first day after their alcohol consuming day, the pattern of nonadherence persisted. Binge and regular drinking days were associated with nonadherence but only binge drinking co-occurred with unprotected sex. Asking about specific “drinking days” improved recall for drinking days and number of drinks consumed. Recall declined for both drinking days and nonadherence from the first week to subsequent weeks but varied randomly for sex risk. There was high concordance and low discordance between A-TLFB drinking and nonadherence but these results were reversed for unprotected sex. Moving beyond simple drinking-adherence correlational analysis, the A-TLFB offers improved recall probes and provides researchers and interventionists with the opportunity to identify types of risky days and tailor behavioral modification to reduce alcohol consumption, nonadherence and risky sex on those days