Metabolic syndrome in rural Australia:An opportunity for primary health care

Objective: To measure the impact of a 6-month home-based behaviour change intervention on reducing the risk of chronic disease as determined by metabolic syndrome status and cardiovascular risk score, and discuss implications for primary care in rural areas. Design: A two-arm randomised controlled trial of rural adults. Setting: The rural town of Albany in the Great Southern region of Western Australia. Participants: Participants (n = 401) aged 50-69 years who were classified with or at risk of metabolic syndrome and randomly assigned to intervention (n = 201) or waitlisted control (n = 200) group. Interventions: A 6-month intervention program incorporating goal setting, self-monitoring and feedback, with motivational interviewing was conducted. Main outcome measures: Change in metabolic syndrome status and cardiovascular risk. Results: Significant improvements in metabolic syndrome status and cardiovascular disease risk score (−0.82) were observed for the intervention group relative to control group from baseline to post-test. Conclusion: This home-based physical activity and nutrition intervention reduced participants' risk of experiencing a cardiovascular event in the next 5 years by 1%. Incorporating such prevention orientated approaches in primary care might assist in reducing the burden of long-term chronic diseases. However, for realistic application in this setting, hurdles such as current national health billing system and availability of resources will need to be considered

The Relevance of Fatalism in the Study of Latinas’ Cancer Screening Behavior: A Systematic Review of the Literature

# The Author(s) 2010. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com Background Fatalism has been identified as a dominant belief among Latinos and is believed to act as a barrier to cancer prevention. However, controversy exists over the utility of the construct in explaining health disparities experienced by disadvantaged populations above the influence of structural barriers such as low socioeconomic status (SES) and limited access to health care. Purpose This paper reviews the empirical research on fatalism and Latinas ’ participation in cancer screening in an attempt to determine whether fatalism predicts participation in cancer screening after accounting for structural barriers

The Impact of Religious Commitment on Women’s Sexual Self-Esteem

Religious commitment is associated with decreased sexual activity, poor sexual satisfaction, and sexual guilt, particularly among women. The purpose of this paper was to investigate how religious commitment is related to sexual self-esteem among women. Participants included 196 female undergraduate students, 87 % of whom identified as Christian. Participants completed the Sexual Self-Esteem Inventory for Women (SSEI-W), Religious Commitment Inventory-10, Revised Religious Fundamentalism Scale, Brief Sexual Attitudes Scale, and a measure of their perception of God’s view of sex. Results suggested that women with high religious commitment held more conservative sexual attitudes. Significant relationships between religious commitment and two subscales (moral judgment and attractiveness) of the SSEI-W revealed that women with high religious commitment were less likely to perceive sex as congruent with their moral values and simultaneously reported significantly greater confidence in their sexual attractiveness. A significant relationship between religious commitment and overall sexual self-esteem was found for women whose religion of origin was Catholicism, such that those with higher religious commitment reported lower sexual self-esteem. A hierarchical regression analysis revealed that high religious commitment and perception that God viewed sex negatively independently predicted lower sexual selfesteem, as related to moral judgment. Implications of the findings are provided