1,336 research outputs found
Assessing health and well-being among older people in rural South Africa
Background: The population in developing countries is ageing, which is likely to increase the burden of noncommunicable diseases and disability.
Objective: To describe factors associated with self-reported health, disability and quality of life (QoL) of older people in the rural northeast of South Africa.
Design: Cross-sectional survey of 6,206 individuals aged 50 and over. We used multivariate analysis to examine relationships between demographic variables and measures of self-reported health (Health Status), functional ability (WHODASi) and quality of life (WHOQoL).
Results: About 4,085 of 6,206 people eligible (65.8%) completed the interview. Women (Odds Ratio (OR)
1.30, 95% CI 1.09, 1.55), older age (OR2.59, 95% CI 1.97, 3.40), lower education (OR1.62, 95% CI 1.31,2.00), single status (OR1.18, 95% CI 1.01, 1.37) and not working at present (OR1.29, 95% CI 1.06, 1.59) were associated with a low health status. Women were also more likely to report a higher level of disability (OR1.38, 95% CI 1.14, 1.66), as were older people (OR2.92, 95% CI 2.25, 3.78), those with no education (OR1.57, 95% CI 1.26, 1.97), with single status (OR1.25, 95% CI 1.06, 1.46) and not working at present (OR1.33, 95% CI 1.06, 1.66). Older age (OR1.35, 95% CI 1.06, 1.74), no education (OR1.39, 95% CI
1.11, 1.73), single status (OR1.28, 95% CI 1.10, 1.49), a low household asset score (OR1.52, 95% CI 1.19,
1.94) and not working at present (OR1.32; 95% CI 1.07, 1.64) were all associated with lower quality of life.
Conclusions: This study presents the first population-based data from South Africa on health status, functional ability and quality of life among older people. Health and social services will need to be restructured to provide effective care for older people living in rural South Africa with impaired functionality and other health problems
Do self-reported intentions predict clinicians behaviour: a systematic review.
Background: Implementation research is the scientific study of methods to promote the systematic uptake of
clinical research findings into routine clinical practice. Several interventions have been shown to be effective in
changing health care professionals' behaviour, but heterogeneity within interventions, targeted behaviours, and
study settings make generalisation difficult. Therefore, it is necessary to identify the 'active ingredients' in
professional behaviour change strategies. Theories of human behaviour that feature an individual's "intention" to
do something as the most immediate predictor of their behaviour have proved to be useful in non-clinical
populations. As clinical practice is a form of human behaviour such theories may offer a basis for developing a
scientific rationale for the choice of intervention to use in the implementation of new practice. The aim of this
review was to explore the relationship between intention and behaviour in clinicians and how this compares to
the intention-behaviour relationship in studies of non-clinicians.
Methods: We searched: PsycINFO, MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled
Trials, Science/Social science citation index, Current contents (social & behavioural med/clinical med), ISI
conference proceedings, and Index to Theses. The reference lists of all included papers were checked manually.
Studies were eligible for inclusion if they had: examined a clinical behaviour within a clinical context, included
measures of both intention and behaviour, measured behaviour after intention, and explored this relationship
quantitatively. All titles and abstracts retrieved by electronic searching were screened independently by two
reviewers, with disagreements resolved by discussion.
Discussion: Ten studies were found that examined the relationship between intention and clinical behaviours in
1623 health professionals. The proportion of variance in behaviour explained by intention was of a similar
magnitude to that found in the literature relating to non-health professionals. This was more consistently the case
for studies in which intention-behaviour correspondence was good and behaviour was self-reported. Though firm
conclusions are limited by a smaller literature, our findings are consistent with that of the non-health professional
literature. This review, viewed in the context of the larger populations of studies, provides encouragement for
the contention that there is a predictable relationship between the intentions of a health professional and their
subsequent behaviour. However, there remain significant methodological challenges
Temporal and Individual Variation in Offspring Provisioning by Tree Swallows: A New Method of Automated Nest Attendance Monitoring
Studies of the ecology and evolution of avian nesting behavior have been limited by the difficulty and expense of sampling nest attendance behavior across entire days or throughout a substantial portion of the nestling period. Direct observation of nesting birds using human observers and most automated devices requires sub-sampling of the nestling period, which does not allow for the quantification of the duration of chick-feeding by parents within a day, and may also inadequately capture temporal variation in the rate at which chicks are fed. Here I describe an inexpensive device, the Automated Perch Recorder (APR) system, which collects accurate, long-term data on hourly rates of nest visitation, the duration of a pair's workday, and the total number of visits the pair makes to their nest across the entire period for which it is deployed. I also describe methods for verifying the accuracy of the system in the field, and several examples of how these data can be used to explore the causes of variation in and tradeoffs between the rate at which birds feed their chicks and the total length of time birds spend feeding chicks in a day
Positive Interspecific Relationship between Temporal Occurrence and Abundance in Insects
One of the most studied macroecological patterns is the interspecific abundance–occupancy relationship, which relates species distribution and abundance across space. Interspecific relationships between temporal distribution and abundance, however, remain largely unexplored. Using data for a natural assemblage of tabanid flies measured daily during spring and summer in Nova Scotia, we found that temporal occurrence (proportion of sampling dates in which a species occurred in an experimental trap) was positively related to temporal mean abundance (number of individuals collected for a species during the study period divided by the total number of sampling dates). Moreover, two models that often describe spatial abundance–occupancy relationships well, the He–Gaston and negative binomial models, explained a high amount of the variation in our temporal data. As for the spatial abundance–occupancy relationship, the (temporal) aggregation parameter, k, emerged as an important component of the hereby named interspecific temporal abundance–occurrence relationship. This may be another case in which a macroecological pattern shows similarities across space and time, and it deserves further research because it may improve our ability to forecast colonization dynamics and biological impacts
The stellar halo of the Galaxy
Stellar halos may hold some of the best preserved fossils of the formation
history of galaxies. They are a natural product of the merging processes that
probably take place during the assembly of a galaxy, and hence may well be the
most ubiquitous component of galaxies, independently of their Hubble type. This
review focuses on our current understanding of the spatial structure, the
kinematics and chemistry of halo stars in the Milky Way. In recent years, we
have experienced a change in paradigm thanks to the discovery of large amounts
of substructure, especially in the outer halo. I discuss the implications of
the currently available observational constraints and fold them into several
possible formation scenarios. Unraveling the formation of the Galactic halo
will be possible in the near future through a combination of large wide field
photometric and spectroscopic surveys, and especially in the era of Gaia.Comment: 46 pages, 16 figures. References updated and some minor changes.
Full-resolution version available at
http://www.astro.rug.nl/~ahelmi/stellar-halo-review.pd
Genome-wide association study evaluating single-nucleotide polymorphisms and outcomes in patients with advanced stage serous ovarian or primary peritoneal cancer: An NRG Oncology/Gynecologic Oncology Group study
This study evaluated single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with progression free (PFS) and overall survival (OS) in patients with advanced stage serous EOC
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