scholarly journals Understanding and use of food labeling systems among Whites and Latinos in the United States and among Mexicans: Results from the International Food Policy Study, 2017

Author(s):  
Claudia Nieto ◽  
Alejandra Jáuregui ◽  
Alejandra Contreras-Manzano ◽  
Edna Arillo-Santillan ◽  
Simón Barquera ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Obesity and chronic diseases could be prevented through improved diet. Most governments require at least one type of food labeling system on packaged foods to communicate nutrition information and promote healthy eating. This study evaluated adult consumer understanding and use of nutrition labeling systems in the US and Mexico, the most obese countries in the world. Methods Adults from online consumer panels in the US (Whites n = 2959; Latinos n = 667) and in Mexico (n = 3533) were shown five food labeling systems: 1. Nutrition Facts Table (NFT) that shows nutrients of concern per serving; 2. Guideline Daily Amounts (GDA) that shows levels of nutrients of concern; 3. Multiple Traffic-Light (MTL) that color codes each GDA nutrient (green = healthy; yellow = moderately unhealthy; red = unhealthy); 4. Health Star Rating System (HSR) that rates foods on a single dimension of healthiness; 5. Warning Label (WL) with a stop sign for nutrients present in unhealthy levels. Participants rated each label on understanding (“easy”/“very easy to understand” vs “difficult”/“very difficult to understand”), and, for NFTs and GDAs, frequency of use (“sometimes”/“often” vs “never”). Mixed logistic models regressed understanding and frequency of use on indicators of labeling systems (NFT = ref), testing for interactions by ethnicity (US Latinos, US Whites, Mexicans), while controlling for sociodemographic and obesity-related factors. Results Compared to the NFT, participants reported greater understanding of the WL (OR = 4.8; 95% CI = 4.4–5.3) and lower understanding of the HSR (OR = 0.34, 95% CI = 0.31–0.37) and the MTL (OR = 0.56, 95% CI = 0.52–0.61), with similar patterns across ethnic subgroups. Participants used GDAs less often than NFTs (OR = 0.48; 95%CI = 0.41–0.55), with the greatest difference among US Whites (OR = 0.10; 95%CI = 0.07–0.14). Conclusions Understanding and use of the GDA was similar to that of the NFT. Whites, Latinos, and Mexicans consistently reported the best understanding for WLs, a FOPL that highlights unhealthfulness of a product. Therefore, a FOPL summary indicator, such as WLs, may be more effective in both the US and Mexico for guiding consumers towards informed food choices.

2016 ◽  
Vol 34 (7_suppl) ◽  
pp. 182-182
Author(s):  
Suzanne Lane ◽  
Sarah Goring ◽  
Kerstin Mueller ◽  
Lisa M. Hess ◽  
Ana Belen Oton ◽  
...  

182 Background: In 2006, maintenance therapy was added as a treatment guideline for patients with advanced non-squamous (nsq) NSCLC. This study aimed to identify patient- and disease-related factors that impact maintenance therapy decision making. Methods: An online discrete choice survey was administered to physicians currently managing patients with advanced nsq NSCLC in the US. Physicians viewed 12 patient profiles differing in levels of the following attributes: 1st line treatment response (complete, partial, stable, progression), adverse events during 1st line therapy (none, mild, moderate, severe), comorbidities (none, mild renal, severe renal, other), patient motivation/convenience (+/+, +/-, -/+, -/-), patient insurance co-pay rate (0, 5, 10, 20%), and age (45, 58, 68, 80 years). No specific maintenance treatments were stated. For each profile, physicians indicated if they would recommend maintenance therapy. Recommendations were analyzed using a mixed-effects logistic regression model. Odds ratios (ORs) were calculated to estimate the relative odds of a maintenance therapy recommendation for levels of each attribute. Results: The survey was completed by 100 physicians (81% male; mean years of experience: 15.4). The study design was balanced and orthogonal. Maintenance therapy was recommended for 75% of the profiles; 98% of physicians recommended maintenance therapy for at least 1 profile, with 26% recommending it for all profiles. The odds of recommending maintenance therapy were significantly lower when the patient profile included disease progression relative to stable response (OR: 0.17; p<0.01), severe renal impairment relative to no comorbidities (OR: 0.38; p<0.01), or low motivation/convenience relative to high motivation/convenience (OR: 0.25; p<0.01). The odds also decreased with increasing age (OR: 0.97 per year increase in age; p<0.01). Conclusions: Treatment response, age, motivation/convenience, and comorbidities were relevant factors for physicians when recommending maintenance therapy. Physicians report recommending maintenance even in the presence of less desirable patient and disease characteristics indicative of a real world setting.


Author(s):  
Babu P. George

This chapter examines the complex dynamics underlying Indian immigrants' decision to continue to stay in the United States or to counter migrate back to India. In a reversal of fortunes, the specific set of conditions that once triggered a massive inflow of economic migrants from India to the US has been causing a counter migration to India. Based on a review of literature and an exploratory study involving focus groups, the authors identify some of the major migration-/counter migration-related factors. Then, employing a survey, the relative importance of each of these factors is gauged for migrant individuals associated with different professions.


Blood ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 128 (22) ◽  
pp. 4489-4489 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert M. Rifkin ◽  
Rafat Abonour ◽  
Brian G.M. Durie ◽  
Cristina J. Gasparetto ◽  
Sundar Jagannath ◽  
...  

Abstract Introduction: Between 2009 and 2015, use of novel therapies (immunomodulating drugs and proteasome inhibitors) in multiple myeloma (MM) increased. Regimens initiated during this time frame may help project near-term future treatment patterns. Connect® MM is the first and largest prospective, observational, US-based, multicenter disease registry designed to characterize treatment patterns and outcomes for patients (pts) with newly diagnosed MM (NDMM). Pts with NDMM were enrolled in 2 sequential cohorts from Sep 2009 to Apr 2016. This noninterventional registry did not prescribe or limit therapy choices. Study sites represented all census regions, with 89% and 11% split between community and academic sites, respectively. This allowed a reasonable generalizability to patterns for the US. Methods: Connect® MM enrollment was initiated in Sep 2009 at 250 community and academic sites. Pts were enrolled within 2 months of diagnosis. Cohort 1 enrolled 1493 NDMM pts from Sep 2009 to Dec 2011, and Cohort 2 enrolled 1518 NDMM pts from Dec 2012 to Apr 2016. Data were collected at a baseline visit and quarterly visits thereafter until death or discontinuation. The current analysis was conducted for the population of treated pts (N=2848) as of May 2016. This study examined recorded treatment choice of first-line regimen, maintenance therapy, and second-line regimen in 6-month intervals. Trends in regimens were graphically represented using "Tepee" plots (Srinivasan, Shankar. Resource Tepee. Patent US 7,495,673 B1. 24 Feb 2009). Briefly, all pts who initiated treatment during each 6-month interval are represented horizontally, with each horizontal line indicating 100% of all treatment used in that period. The regimens are represented by gray shading with wider bands signifying the more frequently used regimens at each time interval. Results: Median follow‐up for all pts was 39.3 months (0.03‐78.4) in Cohort 1 and 15.4 months (0.2-40.1) in Cohort 2. For the treated population, the median age was 67 years (range 24‐94), 58% were male, 83% were white, and 38% of those reporting International Staging System stage had stage III MM. By US geographical region, 329 (11.6%) pts were from the Northeast, 1036 (36.4%) from the Midwest, 1117 (39.2%) from the South, 360 (12.6%) from the West, 4 (0.1%) from Puerto Rico, and 2 missing (0.05%). Most pts (2285; 80.2%) were from community sites, and 397 (13.9%) were from academic sites with the remaining from government sites. A total of 1416 (47.4%) reported an intent to transplant (stem cell transplant [SCT]) at the initiation of therapy. A total of 666 (25.8%) have progressed and entered second line. Tepee plots of treatment patterns for start of induction for those pts with and without SCT intent are provided in Figure 1A and 1B, respectively. The year 2012 does not feature in these induction plots, as this period corresponds to a time when pts were not enrolled-Cohort 1 had been completed and Cohort 2 had not yet opened. The 4 most common induction regimens for SCT intent, from left to right, in order of decreasing frequency of use, were lenalidomide (R), bortezomib (V), dexamethasone (D) combined (RVD); VD; cyclophosphamide plus VD (CyBorD); and RD. The 5 most common induction regimens for those without SCT intent, from left to right, in order of decreasing frequency of use, were VD, RD, RVD, CyBorD, and V. Triplet therapy in first-line induction pts increased in frequency from 2009 to 2014. The 4 most frequent maintenance regimens for those with SCT intent were R monotherapy, V monotherapy, RD, and RVD. The 4 most common maintenance regimens for pts who did not intend to receive SCT were R monotherapy, RD, VD, and V monotherapy. The most prevalent regimens in the second line were VD, RD, V, and RVD. Additional graphs including treatment patterns by age group (≤ 70 vs > 70 years) and maintenance by conduct of first-line SCT will be presented. Conclusions: Our work utilizes Tepee plots to outline induction and maintenance treatment patterns over time, for both SCT and non-SCT intent pts, using the largest, prospective, noninterventional registry study in the US. Triplet therapy use increased in the time period studied, with RVD being the most frequently used triplet for pts with or without SCT intent. The most common maintenance regimens included R as monotherapy or in combination. Disclosures Rifkin: Takeda: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; Celgene: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; Amgen/ONYX: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees. Abonour:Celgene: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees. Durie:Amgen: Consultancy; Janssen: Consultancy; Takeda: Consultancy. Gasparetto:Celgene: Consultancy, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Research Funding; Takeda: Consultancy; Janssen: Honoraria; Bristol-Myers Squibb: Honoraria. Jagannath:Bristol-Myers Squibb: Consultancy; Celgene: Consultancy; Merck: Consultancy. Terebelo:Celgene: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees. Toomey:Celgene: Consultancy. Kitali:Celgene: Employment, Equity Ownership. Zafar:Celgene: Employment. Srinivasan:Celgene: Employment; Individual Patent: Patents & Royalties: US7,495,673B1 Used for MM-Connect Treatment Patterns Abstract.. Hardin:Celgene: Consultancy, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees.


2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Pawee Jenweeranon

AbstractThe patent assertion entity (PAE) which known as “the world, particularly severe impact in the US Specifically, in 2013, the report entitled “Patent Assertion and US Innovation” issued by the National Economic Council and Council of Economic Advisers of the US clearly reflected the significant harm of patent assertion toward the economic development of the country. Moreover, the Congress of the United States planned to reconsider the Innovation Act for combating PAEs at the beginning of May. The ongoing discussion in the Congress implies that analyzing the 2015 proposed Innovation Act is important for finding appropriate solutions to solve the remaining problem regarding the abuse of patent litigation in the US, specifically, Patent Trolling activity costs the US economy billions of dollars per year. The IT industry is the main target of patent trollers, briefly, due to the standard for considering the eligibility criteria for a software patent is still weak. Admittedly, many legal scholars believe that the proposed bill will be the significant tool for solving the abuse of patent litigation. For this reason, this research will analyze the major provisions in the proposed bill. Additionally, related cases in the US also will be addressed in this research, for instance, the case between Octane Fitness, LLC and ICON Health & Fitness, Inc. which will be discussed herein. This paper will define the concept of the patent assertion or patent troll and examine the relationship with IT industry. The paper will then clarify the significant role of the Innovation Act 2015 in the patent assertion. Further, this thesis will compare the major provisions of the Innovation Bill 2015 by separating into five main issues with the regulatory framework in Japan and Taiwan, study the rules which were laid down in the landmark cases to understand the court interpretation and propose the suggestion for selected countries to address aforementioned problem. In other words, an analysis of the Patent Assertion Entities situation in Japan and Taiwan will be conducted focusing on the regulatory framework for preventing patent troll and its activities because Japanese and Taiwanese IT Industry normally be targeted by foreign patent trollers. This situation led to the defensive measures issued by the Japanese and Taiwanese government which will be addressed in this paper. A comparative study of the Innovation bill and the domestic laws of Taiwan, Japan, and related factors will be analyzed herein.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Katherine Bone ◽  
Hei Wan Mak ◽  
Jill Sonke ◽  
Meg Fluharty ◽  
Jenny Lee ◽  
...  

Arts engagement is a health-related behavior that may be influenced by social inequalities. While the COVID-19 pandemic provided new opportunities for some people to engage in the arts, it might have created barriers for others. We aimed to examine whether there was social patterning in home-based arts engagement during the pandemic in the United States (US), and whether predictors of engagement differed according to the type of arts activity. We included 4,731 adults who participated in the US COVID-19 Social Study between April and July 2020. Three types of home-based arts engagement were considered: reading for pleasure, arts or crafts activities, and digital arts activities. Using logistic regression models, we tested cross-sectional associations between a broad range of demographic, socioeconomic, psychosocial, and health-related factors as well as adverse events and worries during lockdown and each type of arts engagement. The factors most strongly associated with all three types of arts engagement were social support, social network size, age, race/ethnicity, keyworker status, and experiencing physical or psychological abuse during the pandemic. However, most socioeconomic and health-related factors were not associated with arts engagement, including household income and mental and physical health problems. Overall, our findings indicate that the social gradient in arts engagement was reduced in the first four months of the COVID-19 pandemic in the US. Given the health benefits of arts engagement, the potential diversification of arts audiences during the pandemic is promising for both population-level health and wellbeing and the future of the arts and cultural sector.


2000 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louis M. Hsu ◽  
Judy Hayman ◽  
Judith Koch ◽  
Debbie Mandell

Summary: In the United States' normative population for the WAIS-R, differences (Ds) between persons' verbal and performance IQs (VIQs and PIQs) tend to increase with an increase in full scale IQs (FSIQs). This suggests that norm-referenced interpretations of Ds should take FSIQs into account. Two new graphs are presented to facilitate this type of interpretation. One of these graphs estimates the mean of absolute values of D (called typical D) at each FSIQ level of the US normative population. The other graph estimates the absolute value of D that is exceeded only 5% of the time (called abnormal D) at each FSIQ level of this population. A graph for the identification of conventional “statistically significant Ds” (also called “reliable Ds”) is also presented. A reliable D is defined in the context of classical true score theory as an absolute D that is unlikely (p < .05) to be exceeded by a person whose true VIQ and PIQ are equal. As conventionally defined reliable Ds do not depend on the FSIQ. The graphs of typical and abnormal Ds are based on quadratic models of the relation of sizes of Ds to FSIQs. These models are generalizations of models described in Hsu (1996) . The new graphical method of identifying Abnormal Ds is compared to the conventional Payne-Jones method of identifying these Ds. Implications of the three juxtaposed graphs for the interpretation of VIQ-PIQ differences are discussed.


2009 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Ann Abate Michelle

This essay argues that in spite of their obvious Biblically-based subject matter, clear Christian content, and undeniable evangelical perspective, the Left Behind novels for kids are not simply religious books; they are also political ones. Co-authors Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins may claim that their narratives are interested in sharing the good news about Jesus for the sake of the future, but they are equally concerned with offering commentary on contentious US cultural issues in the present. Given the books’ adolescent readership, they are especially preoccupied with the ongoing conservative crusade concerning school prayer. As advocates for this issue, LaHaye and Jenkins make use of a potent blend of current socio-political arguments and of past events in evangelical church history: namely, the American Sunday School Movement (ASSM). These free, open-access Sabbath schools became the model for the public education system in the United States. In drawing on this history, the Left Behind series suggests that the ASSM provides an important precedent for the presence not simply of Christianity in the nation's public school system, but of evangelical faith in particular.


Author(s):  
Steven Hurst

The United States, Iran and the Bomb provides the first comprehensive analysis of the US-Iranian nuclear relationship from its origins through to the signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2015. Starting with the Nixon administration in the 1970s, it analyses the policies of successive US administrations toward the Iranian nuclear programme. Emphasizing the centrality of domestic politics to decision-making on both sides, it offers both an explanation of the evolution of the relationship and a critique of successive US administrations' efforts to halt the Iranian nuclear programme, with neither coercive measures nor inducements effectively applied. The book further argues that factional politics inside Iran played a crucial role in Iranian nuclear decision-making and that American policy tended to reinforce the position of Iranian hardliners and undermine that of those who were prepared to compromise on the nuclear issue. In the final chapter it demonstrates how President Obama's alterations to American strategy, accompanied by shifts in Iranian domestic politics, finally brought about the signing of the JCPOA in 2015.


2014 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 381-388 ◽  
Author(s):  
Euan Hague ◽  
Alan Mackie

The United States media have given rather little attention to the question of the Scottish referendum despite important economic, political and military links between the US and the UK/Scotland. For some in the US a ‘no’ vote would be greeted with relief given these ties: for others, a ‘yes’ vote would be acclaimed as an underdog escaping England's imperium, a narrative clearly echoing America's own founding story. This article explores commentary in the US press and media as well as reporting evidence from on-going interviews with the Scottish diaspora in the US. It concludes that there is as complex a picture of the 2014 referendum in the United States as there is in Scotland.


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