Neighborhood Variability in Obesity in Children in Omaha, Nebraska

BACKGROUND: The prevalence of childhood obesity is a serious public health concern in the United States. Although several individual-level factors have been found to be associated with obesity in children, neighborhood environmental and social factors likely play an important role. The main goal of this study was to describe the prevalence of child obesity in Omaha, Nebraska by various demographic subgroups, determine if obesity prevalence varies by neighborhood operationalized as zip code, and examine the association between neighborhood-level child obesity prevalence and neighborhood-level socioeconomic status. It was hypothesized that child obesity prevalence varies by demographic subgroup and by zip code and that neighborhood SES is significantly associated with child obesity prevalence. METHOD: Electronic health record data from Children’s Hospital & Medical Center’s primary care network was utilized to examine child obesity based on objectively measured heights and weights from a sample of 40,303 children aged two to 20 years in 34 zip codes in Omaha, Nebraska. Chi-square test of independence assessed the association between individual-level demographic variables and obesity. Child obesity was mapped by zip code. Pearson correlation assessed the relationship between neighborhood-level obesity and neighborhood-level median household income and percent of individuals below poverty in a subsample. RESULTS: Chi-square analyses revealed that obesity is significantly associated with gender (Χ2(1) = 26.42, p \u3c .0001), age (Χ2(3) = 300.69, p \u3c .0001), race (Χ2(7) = 951.40, p \u3c .0001), ethnicity (Χ2(1) = 593.75, p \u3c .0001), and medical insurance provider (Χ2(1) = 629.50, p \u3c .0001). Demographic subgroups more likely to be obese were males, children 12 to 17 years old, Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islanders, Hispanics, and those on Medicaid. Obesity prevalence by zip code ranged from 6.7% to 26.7%. Neighborhood-level child obesity, defined by percent obese in each neighborhood, was significantly associated with both neighborhood-level median household income (r=-0.69406, p\u3c.0001) and percent of individuals below poverty (0.72843, p\u3c.0001). CONCLUSION: This study provides a preliminary cross-sectional analysis of current child obesity prevalence in Omaha, Nebraska. Child obesity prevalence varied by zip code, and significant associations were found between each individual-level variable and child obesity and between both neighborhood-level variables and neighborhood-level child obesity. Future studies should utilize a multi-unit statistical model approach to data analysis, examine obesity trends longitudinally to examine the underlying factors causing obesity, and examine neighborhood variation in child obesity at multiple geographic scales. Future community interventions should include a focus on geospatial areas and use of multi-setting, multi-strategy approaches in order to impact the neighborhood factors influencing child obesity

ID1 Paper Prize Winners

A list of ID1 Paper Prize Winners from 2010-2015

Review essay

THE GAZE OF THE WEST AND FRAMINGS OF THE EAST, SHANTA NAIR-VENUGOPAL (ED.) (2012) Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, XV + 264 pp. ISBN: 978-0-230-30292-1, h/bk, £66.0

The Financial Crisis - Global Governance Failure?

The asymmetries created by the non-conventional threats tend to lean the international security toward its human approach. Nevertheless, we now have to deal with the need for international cooperation and with finding complex solution to complex global issues. The international scene can be defined through its need for security and cooperation. This paper aims to analyze the international relations in three directions: the relationship between global governance and international security, the impact of the financial crisis on the world and the need for a new global governance architecture as a solution for stability and sustainability. Considering recent events, we need to find a new paradigm for global governance. The aim of this paper is to put forward the need for global governance reform through government networks. In addition, I consider a heterarchic vision of the new world order.global governance, financial crisis, international security

Social Psychology And Marketing: The Consumption Game. Understanding Marketing And Consumer Behavior Through Game Theory

Consumer psychology provides enough evidence that consumer behavior is not just one side of our existence, but, as a matter of fact, it is a central dimension of our everyday lives, engaging us into changing and defining our identity, beliefs, attitudes and practices. In relation to this, commodification has reached us on all levels: everything that people created, produced and developed over the years, during the post-industrial era, can be commodified and sold to a specific market. Commodification and increased consumption are crossing the line between values and needs, production and creation, identity and capital accumulation, thus making people constantly expecting a payoff while engaging in social, cultural and economic transactions. In this article we argue that we can use the models of game theory to understand socio-economic phenomena such as consumption, B2C marketing and market dynamics.Game Theory, consumer behaviour, commodification, decision theory, marketing

Intraportfolio Litigation Essay

The modern trend is for investors to diversify. Shareholders who own one S&P 500 firm tend to own many of the others as well. This trend casts doubt on the traditional compensation and deterrence rationales for legal rules that hold corporations liable for the acts of their agents. Today, when A Corp sues B Corp (for breach of contract, theft of trade secrets, or any other legal wrong), many of the same shareholders own both the plaintiff and the defendant. For these shareholders, damages just shift money from one pocket to another, minus of course lawyer fees. We offer here a new rationale for corporate liability in such cases of “intraportfolio litigation.” Although corporae managers are typically rewarded for maximizing firm profits, what shareholders really care about is overall portfolio value. Firm-on-firm lawsuits can reduce principal-agent conflict by assigning intraportfolio costs to the managers responsible for them. Firm-specific financial data thus become a better tool for diversified shareholders to use in motivating and evaluating managers. Not all intraportfolio litigation can be justified on informational grounds, however. For example, securities fraud class actions against corporations lack informational value because the damages awards overstate the intraportfolio harm. Our theory thus provides lawmakers with a framework for distinguishing between value-creating and value-destroying lawsuits among diversified shareholders

Reducing Disease Exacerbation in Women with Confirmed COPD: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract A systematic literature review was conducted to establish whether gender specific treatment exists for patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), specifically, women with (COPD). The PICO question developed for this review is as follows: In women with confirmed diagnoses of COPD, does gender-specific treatment, compared to standard treatment, impact the frequency of exacerbations? Could the number of COPD exacerbations in women be reduced by incorporating interventions designed with (female) gender in mind? Four databases were included in the search: CINAHL, Pubmed, Medline, and Nursing and Allied Health. Articles included addressed gender differences in relation to the disease process, medication(s), or overall treatment. There were 16 articles selected for this review. This analysis found gender differences with regards to lung development, disease presentation, diagnosis, exacerbations, and prognosis. A definitive answer to the PICO question was not found from this systematic review, yet future research is warranted to determine whether gender differences to exist with regards to treatments/interventions in patients with COPD. Recommendations for practice, research, education, and policy are based on articles included within the review

Essay VIII: a key work in the piano output of Christopher Bochmann

Christopher Bochmann's pianistic language is based on a fairly conventional instrumental technique, inherited from the 19th century pianistic tradition, yet encompassing characteristic features developed by authors associated with the 2nd Viennese School and post-serialism, as well as significant experiences in the fields of free forms and aleatoric music. The permeability to a neoclassical sensibility, probably stimulated by contact with Nadia Boulanger in the formative years, has remained over time and manifests itself from time to time, both in the use of techniques, genres and forms of the past, but also, more comprehensively, in a constant search for balance and proportionality, across all of Bochmann’s works. From 1991, the year he composed Essay VIII, for solo piano, Bochmann inaugurated his maturity phase, based on what he calls a “unified technique”. The significant consistency of his instrumental language from then on results, to a large extent, from the synthesis of previously explored elements that Essay VIII operates, as I intend to demonstrate throughout this essay. Furthermore, we shall see how specific traits, not always particularly idiomatic, of Bochmann’s pianistic idiom enhance the aural understanding of the compositional principles that structure the work in analysis, and how a successful performance of the work depends largely on the understanding and highlighting, through specific performance practices, of the composer’s choices