scholarly journals Using E-Mail Health Interventions and Transtheoretical Model to Promote Wellness

2014 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-70
Author(s):  
Larry W. Anenson, Jr. ◽  
Ardith Brunt ◽  
Donna Terbizan ◽  
Bryan Christensen
Keyword(s):  
Transtheoretical Model ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
Health Messages ◽  
World Health ◽  
Health Message ◽  
Health Goals ◽  
Personal Wellness ◽  
Quasi Experimental ◽  
To Receive ◽  
E Mail

Purpose: The purpose of this quasi-experimental study was to determine the effectiveness of one weekly e-mail health (e-health) message in assisting individuals meet their self-identified health goals. Methods: Employees (N=31) from a midwestern city were recruited at a Benefits Fair health booth and divided into two groups based on their desire to receive additional health information. The participants in each group were then randomly assigned to receive basic or detailed e-health messages that were developed using the constructs of the Transtheoretical Model. Participants self-identified a personal wellness goal and how soon they planned to start working toward accomplishing this goal. For 38 weeks, the basic group received weekly e-health messages that contained basic information related to one of the World Health Organization’s seven dimensions of wellness while the detailed group received the basic message plus additional games, webpage links and more extensive information. Participant’s progress along the change continuum and goal completion was assessed 38 weeks later with a Post-Wellness Survey. Results: Participants exhibited positive movement on the behavior change continuum with many reaching their goals, regardless of the type of e-health message received. Conclusion: E-health messages can be a practical, cost-effective way to assist employees in making healthy behavioral changes and meeting their personal health goals.

scholarly journals Worksite Wellness

2012 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-27
Author(s):  
Larry W. Anenson, Jr. ◽  
Ardith Brunt ◽  
Donna Terbizan ◽  
Bryan Christensen
Keyword(s):  
Blood Pressure ◽  
At Risk ◽  
Health Messages ◽  
World Health ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Health Message ◽  
Quasi Experimental ◽  
Mail Address ◽  
To Receive ◽  
E Mail

The purpose of this 38-week, quasi-experimental study was to determine the effectiveness of one weekly e-mail health (e-health) message that utilized the World Health Organization’s seven dimensions of wellness. Employees from a large Midwestern city were recruited and divided into two groups based on their desire to receive additional health information. The participants in each group were then randomly assigned to receive basic or detailed e-health messages. The basic e-health message consisted of an e-mail with health tips for the specific topic; whereas the detailed message included the basic message plus links to games, surveys, and websites to supplement the basic message. Those lacking an e-mail address comprised the control group, and did not receive any e-health messages. A total of 46 employees completed both assessments and comprised the analytic sample. Systolic blood pressure significantly decreased in unmotivated participants receiving the detailed messages (-2.1 mmHg, p=0.04). Across all groups, at-risk participants (blood pressure ? 140/90 mm/Hg or body mass index ? 25 kg/m2) showed greatest improvement with significant drops in both systolic and diastolic blood pressure. Detailed ehealth messages may be an effective approach to assist employees who are at-risk for chronic disease.

scholarly journals Public Health Messages Associated with the Low Exposure Category of the UV Index Need Reconsideration

Proceedings ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Lehmann ◽  
Annette B. Pfahlberg ◽  
Henner Sandmann ◽  
Wolfgang Uter ◽  
Olaf Gefeller
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Uv Radiation ◽  
Sun Exposure ◽  
Health Messages ◽  
World Health ◽  
Skin Damage ◽  
Health Message ◽  
Exposure Category ◽  
Published Evidence ◽  
Public Health Messages

Overexposure to ultraviolet (UV) radiation is the main modifiable risk factor for skin cancer. The Global Solar Ultraviolet Index (UVI) was introduced as a tool to visualize the intensity of UV radiation on a certain day which should enable and encourage people to take appropriate protective measures. The exposure category ‘low’ of the UVI, including values from 0 to 2, was linked to the health message ‘No protection required’ by the World Health Organization and collaborating centres. However, published evidence corroborating this advice is scarce. Therefore, we analysed ambient erythemal irradiance data of 14,431 daily UVI time series of low UVI days. Data were gathered at nine stations of the German solar UV monitoring networkcovering all major climate areas in Germanyin the years 2007–2016. We compared ambient erythemal doses calculated for various time intervals with average minimal erythemal doses (MEDs) of the Caucasian Fitzpatrick skin phototypes I-IV to assess the potential for skin damage arising from sun exposure on days with low UVI values. The most common months for the occurrence of days with low UVI values in our dataset were January and December, February and November, and March and October for UVI 0, 1 and 2, respectively. Our results indicate that on days with a UVI value of 0, risk of deterministic radiation injury (solar erythema) is negligible. Conversely, the above-mentioned health message appears misleading when melano-compromised individuals spend several hours outdoors on days with a UVI value of 2, as median doses exceed the MEDs of Fitzpatrick skin types I and II after an exposure duration of only 2 h around solar noon. Under very rare specific circumstances, MEDs of those two most sensitive skin types can also be exceeded even on days with UVI 1. Hence, two aspects of current public health messages may need reconsideration: on the one hand, the health message related to an ‘innocuous level’ of the UVI and, on the other hand, a possible adaption of UVI-related health messages to different skin types.

scholarly journals Relationship between Depressive Symptomatology, Physical Activity, and Response to Online Health Messages

Obesities ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 144-156
Author(s):  
Jason Gibbs ◽  
Hillary E. Swann-Thomsen ◽  
Nicki L. Aubuchon-Endsley
Keyword(s):  
Physical Activity ◽  
Behavior Change ◽  
Depressive Symptomatology ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
Health Messages ◽  
Amazon Mechanical Turk ◽  
Depression Symptom ◽  
Activity Levels ◽  
Health Message ◽  
Physical Activity Levels

Although physical activity interventions are efficacious for decreasing depressive symptomatology severity, there are several barriers to accessing treatment, supporting the need for intervention delivery in more accessible and cost-effective modes. However, individuals may respond defensively to health messages if perceiving them as threatening, and thereby fail to change behaviors. Although online, health-based interventions are effective in leading to behavior change, limited research has been conducted to identify ways in which people respond differently to online health messages. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate how individuals differ in their acceptance and interpretation of online health-related messages as threatening, as well as their desire to improve health behaviors based on their current depressive and physical activity levels. A total of 197 participants (MAGE = 36.17 years, SDAGE = 12.52 years) drawn from Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) were asked to read a message regarding the importance of physical activity for health. Their defensiveness and behavior change intentionality were evaluated in relation to physical activity and depressive symptomatology. Individuals who engaged in less physical activity were more accepting of the health message, more likely to find the article threatening, agree that less exercise was related to negative health issues, and agree they should increase their physical activity. Individuals with higher self-ratings of depressive symptomatology were less accepting of the health message, found the article more threatening, and believed it to be less important to increase their physical activity levels. However, neither physical activity nor depression symptom severity were related to whether an individual would actually increase their physical activity. There was no statistically significant correlation between physical activity and depression. Explanations for these findings are provided.

scholarly journals Is it cost effective to use a 2% chlorhexidine wipes bath to reduce central-line associated blood stream infection? A quasi-experimental study

2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 101538
Author(s):  
Diego Feriani ◽  
Ercilia Evangelista Souza ◽  
Larissa Gordilho Mutti Carvalho ◽  
Aline Santos Ibanes ◽  
Eliana Vasconcelos ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Study ◽  
Blood Stream Infection ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
Blood Stream ◽  
Central Line ◽  
Quasi Experimental

scholarly journals Improving the Role and Contribution of Pharmacokinetic Analyses in Antimalarial Drug Clinical Trials

2014 ◽  
Vol 58 (10) ◽  
pp. 5643-5649 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Kay ◽  
Eva Maria Hodel ◽  
Ian M. Hastings
Keyword(s):  
Antimalarial Drug ◽  
Theoretical Data ◽  
Drug Efficacy ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
Field Studies ◽  
World Health ◽  
Efficacy Trials ◽  
Drug Concentrations ◽  
Health Organization ◽  
Study Designs

ABSTRACTIt is now World Health Organization (WHO) policy that drug concentrations on day 7 be measured as part of routine assessment in antimalarial drug efficacy trials. The rationale is that this single pharmacological measure serves as a simple and practical predictor of treatment outcome for antimalarial drugs with long half-lives. Herein we review theoretical data and field studies and conclude that the day 7 drug concentration (d7c) actually appears to be a poor predictor of therapeutic outcome. This poor predictive capability combined with the fact that many routine antimalarial trials will have few or no failures means that there appears to be little justification for this WHO recommendation. Pharmacological studies have a huge potential to improve antimalarial dosing, and we propose study designs that use more-focused, sophisticated, and cost-effective ways of generating these data than the mass collection of single d7c concentrations.

Effectiveness of Computer-Generated Appointment Reminders

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1991 ◽  
Vol 88 (4) ◽  
pp. 801-805 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas G. Quattlebaum ◽  
Paul M. Darden ◽  
John B. Sperry
Keyword(s):  
Block Scheduling ◽  
Pediatric Patients ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Low Socioeconomic ◽  
Socioeconomic Groups ◽  
Patient Demographics ◽  
If Current ◽  
Appointment Time ◽  
To Receive

Previous studies of appointment reminders among general pediatric patients have been done exclusively among low socioeconomic populations in clinics with low continuity of care and using block scheduling methods. This study of mailed computer-generated appointment reminders took place in a setting with patient demographics and practice techniques similar to those of many private pediatric practices. During a 6-month period, 901 appointments that were made more than 7 days prior to the scheduled date were randomly assigned to receive reminder postcards or to serve as controls. The overall broken appointment (no-show) rate was reduced from 19% in the control group to 10% in the reminder group, representing a 48% reduction (P = .0002). The magnitude of reduction of no-shows was similar for appointments scheduled more than 14 days prior to the appointment time (39%) as well as those scheduled more recently (58%). Equivalent results were seen with well-child appointments (47%) as with other visits (50%). Both lower and higher socioeconomic groups demonstrated similar results. The mailed postcards cost $0.20 each and were highly cost effective, generating an estimated $7.50 for each $1 spent during the study. With reductions similar to those found in this study, computer-generated appointment reminders are likely to be cost effective in other practices if current no-show rates are greater than 2% to 4%.

Program Against Cancer in Eritrea

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 01-04
Author(s):  
El Hadji Mbaye
Keyword(s):  
Cancer Incidence ◽  
Purchasing Power Parity ◽  
National Income ◽  
Cancer Control ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
Central Intelligence Agency ◽  
World Health ◽  
Power Parity ◽  
Intelligence Agency ◽  
The World

Worldwide, one in eight deaths is due to cancer. Projections based on the GLOBOCAN 2012 estimates predict a substantive increase new cancer cases per year by 2035 in developing countries if preventive measures are not widely applied. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), millions of lives could be saved each year if countries made use of existing knowledge and the best cost-effective methods to prevent and treat cancer. Therefore, the aim of this study is to estimate a provisional budget against cancer in low and middle incomes countries, according the GNI-PPP, the cancer incidence and the number of population. Economically country classification is determining with the Gross national income (GNI), per capita, Purchasing power parity (PPP), according the administrations of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank (WB) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Cancer incidence data presented are based on the most recent data available at IARC. However, population compares estimates from the US Bureau of the Census. The provisional budget is establishing among the guidelines developed by WHO for regional and national cancer control programs according to national economic development. Provisional budget against cancer is estimated to 12,782.535 (thousands of U.S $) for a population of 5,918,919 persons in Eritrea.

scholarly journals An IoT Architecture for Assessing Road Safety in Smart Cities

2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abd-Elhamid M. Taha
Keyword(s):  
Road Safety ◽  
Markov Models ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Dynamic Assessment ◽  
Route Planning ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
World Health ◽  
Road Users ◽  
Health Organization ◽  
The Impact

The Safe System (SS) approach to road safety emphasizes safety-by-design through ensuring safe vehicles, road networks, and road users. With a strong motivation from the World Health Organization (WHO), this approach is increasingly adopted worldwide. Considerations in SS, however, are made for the medium-to-long term. Our interest in this work is to complement the approach with a short-to-medium term dynamic assessment of road safety. Toward this end, we introduce a novel, cost-effective Internet of Things (IoT) architecture that facilitates the realization of a robust and dynamic computational core in assessing the safety of a road network and its elements. In doing so, we introduce a new, meaningful, and scalable metric for assessing road safety. We also showcase the use of machine learning in the design of the metric computation core through a novel application of Hidden Markov Models (HMMs). Finally, the impact of the proposed architecture is demonstrated through an application to safety-based route planning.

scholarly journals Bone density testing in clinical practice

2006 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 586-595 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Michael Lewiecki ◽  
João Lindolfo C. Borges
Keyword(s):  
Forearm Fracture ◽  
Fragility Fractures ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
Reference Population ◽  
Pharmacological Therapy ◽  
World Health ◽  
Mineral Density ◽  
Skeletal Health ◽  
T Score ◽  
Bmd Testing

The diagnosis of osteoporosis and monitoring of treatment is a challenge for physicians due to the large number of available tests and complexities of interpretation. Bone mineral density (BMD) testing is a non-invasive measurement to assess skeletal health. The "gold-standard" technology for diagnosis and monitoring is dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) of the spine, hip, or forearm. Fracture risk can be predicted using DXA and other technologies at many skeletal sites. Despite guidelines for selecting patients for BMD testing and identifying those most likely to benefit from treatment, many patients are not being tested or receiving therapy. Even patients with very high risk of fracture, such as those on long-term glucocorticoid therapy or with prevalent fragility fractures, are often not managed appropriately. The optimal testing strategy varies according to local availability and affordability of BMD testing. The role of BMD testing to monitor therapy is still being defined, and interpretation of serial studies requires special attention to instrument calibration, acquisition technique, analysis, and precision assessment. BMD is usually reported as a T-score, the standard deviation variance of the patient's BMD compared to a normal young-adult reference population. BMD in postmenopausal women is classified as normal, osteopenia, or osteoporosis according to criteria established by the World Health Organization. Standardized methodologies are being developed to establish cost-effective intervention thresholds for pharmacological therapy based on T-score combined with clinical risk factors for fracture.

scholarly journals Motion – Screening and Surveillance of Barrett’s Epithelium Is Practical and Cost Effective: Arguments against the Motion

2002 ◽  
Vol 16 (8) ◽  
pp. 541-545 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naoki Chiba
Keyword(s):  
Cost Effective ◽  
World Health ◽  
Endoscopic Screening ◽  
Effective Screening ◽  
Screening And Surveillance ◽  
Screening Protocol ◽  
Surveillance Programs ◽  
Prolongation Of Life ◽  
Health Organization ◽  
Very High

The issue of whether to screen individuals for Barrett’s esophagus (BE) to prevent esophageal adenocarcinoma (EAC) is highly controversial. Important considerations are that BE is not highly prevalent in the general population and that not many patients with BE develop or die from EAC. Studies that suggest an improved prognosis from surveillance programs are susceptible to lead-time bias. Most of the principles for effective screening, as outlined by the World Health Organization, are not met by endoscopic screening and surveillance protocols. The diagnosis of BE (and dysplasia) is often unclear. Most patients with BE are not identified by screening, and few deaths would be prevented by surveillance. A decision analysis found that the most cost effective screening protocol would be every five years, but the costs associated with prolongation of life are very high, even if a group at high risk for EAC could be identified.

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