Why health visiting? Examining the potential public health benefits from health visiting practice within a universal service: A narrative review of the literature

INTRODUCTION: There is increasing international interest in universal, health promoting services for pregnancy and the first three years of life and the concept of proportionate universalism. Drawing on a narrative review of literature, this paper explores mechanisms by which such services might contribute to health improvement and reducing health inequalities. OBJECTIVES: Through a narrative review of empirical literature, to identify: DESIGN: The paper draws upon a scoping study and narrative review. REVIEW METHODS: We used three complementary approaches to search the widely dispersed literature: Our key inclusion criterion was information about health visiting practice. We included empirical papers from United Kingdom (UK) from 2004 to February 2012 and older seminal papers identified in search (3), identifying a total of 348 papers for inclusion. A thematic content analysis compared the older (up to 2003) with more recent research (2004 onwards). RESULTS: The analysis revealed health visiting practice as potentially characterized by a particular 'orientation to practice.' This embodied the values, skills and attitudes needed to deliver universal health visiting services through salutogenesis (health creation), person-centredness (human valuing) and viewing the person in situation (human ecology). Research about health visiting actions focuses on home visiting, needs assessment and parent-health visitor relationships. The detailed description of health visitors' skills, attitudes, values, and their application in practice, provides an explanation of how universal provision can potentially help to promote health and shift the social gradient of health inequalities. CONCLUSIONS: Identification of needs across an undifferentiated, universal caseload, combined with an outreach style that enhances uptake of needed services and appropriate health or parenting information, creates opportunities for parents who may otherwise have remained unaware of, or unwilling to engage with such provision. There is a lack of evaluative research about health visiting practice, service organization or universal health visiting as potential mechanisms for promoting health and reducing health inequalities. This paper offers a potential foundation for such research in future

Examining the Spacing Effect in Advertising: Encoding Variability, Retrieval Processes, and Their Interaction

Recall of print material benefits from spacing repetitions of that material, an effect often attributed to varied encodings induced by changes in contextual cues. We examined an alternative explanation: retrieving earlier presentations during later presentations strengthens memory traces, the more so the greater the difficulty of such retrieval. In four experiments we found that (a) study-phase retrieval contributes to the benefits of spacing and (b) inducing variation via changes in ad formatting and content can be counterproductive at long spacing intervals, apparently because such changes decrease the likelihood that earlier presentations will be retrieved during later presentations. (c) 2005 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc..

Neurocognitive Treatments for Eating Disorders and Obesity

Purpose of reviewRecent research has highlighted executive function and neurocognitive deficits among individuals with eating and weight disorders, identifying a potential target for treatment. Treatments targeting executive function for eating and weight disorders are emerging. This review aims to summarize the recent literature evaluating neurocognitive/executive function-oriented treatments for eating and weight disorders and highlights additional work needed in this area.Recent findingsCognitive remediation therapy (CRT) for anorexia nervosa has been the most extensively studied neurocognitive treatment for eating disorders. Results demonstrate that CRT improves executive function and may aid in the reduction of eating disorder symptomatology. Computer training programs targeting modifying attention and increasing inhibition are targeting reduction of binge eating and weight loss with modest success. Neurocognitive treatments are emerging and show initial promise for eating and weight disorders. Further research is necessary to determine whether these treatments can be used as stand-alone treatments or whether they need to be used as an adjunct to or in conjunction with other evidence-based treatments to improve outcomes

Adults with overweight or obesity use less efficient memory strategies compared to adults with healthy weight on a verbal list learning task modified with food words.

Several studies suggest poorer episodic memory among adults with overweight (OW) relative to those with healthy weight (HW); however, few have used food stimuli. To understand the salience of food-related items when assessing memory, we adapted an episodic memory task, by replacing some non-food words with snack foods. Participants were 96 weight-loss seeking adults with OW compared to 48 adults with HW from the community matched on age, gender, ethnicity, and education. Overall memory ability was similar, although a trend showed the adults with HW performed better than adults with OW on immediate recall (d = 0.32, p = 0.07). However, there were clear differences in the use of learning strategies. Adults with HW utilized sematic clustering more effectively than adults with OW during all test phases (ds = 0.44-0.62; ps ≤ 0.01). Adults with HW also utilized serial clustering more effectively (d = 0.51; p < 0.01). Adults with HW showed better semantic clustering for both food and non-food words during immediate and short delay recall (ds = 0.42-0.78; ps ≤ 0.01) but semantic clustering was only better for the non-food category at long delay (d = 0.55; p < 0.01). These results show that adults with OW utilized less efficient learning strategies throughout the task and food-related content may impact learning. Clinically, these findings may suggest that weight-loss treatments should consider incorporating the teaching of learning and memory strategies to help increase utilization of new skills