Search

Analyses of the 2002 U.S. National Health and Examination Survey (1,490 adults) examined relationships between alcohol frequency, quantity, and total weekly consumption and preventive and emergency dental service use during the past 12 months. Logistic regression analyses indicated a significant, small percentage of variance in dental service use explained by alcohol use (1%), controlling for predisposing (19%), enabling (18%), or need (4%) covariates. Preventive and emergency service use were associated with higher frequency drinking, but lower total consumption (significant only for preventive services). Limitations and implications for brief alcohol interventions in dental practice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study discussed in this article examined the relationship between depression symptomatology and functional impairment among white and African American elderly people and investigated the effect of race, religiosity, and social support on this relationship. Study results indicate that although African American elderly people were more impaired in the performance of activities of daily living (ADL) and instrumental activities of daily living (IADL) than white elderly people, they did not experience higher levels of depression. However, African Americans did report significantly higher levels of religiosity and social support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The predictive validity of a treatment readiness measure designed for out-of-treatment drug users, tapping dimensions of perceived problem severity, perceived need for formal treatment, motivation for treatment, and negative attitudes toward treatment is examined using data from a National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)-funded HIV outreach intervention in San Antonio, Texas. Logistic regression is used to predict use of substance abuse treatment services three months after program intake on the basis of readiness scores, controlling for demographic and drug history variables. Analyses of data from 673 drug users in an HIV outreach intervention indicated that treatment readiness dimensions accounted for a 12% increase in variation in "use of any modality" and 14% for "use or attempted service use". Only Motivation to Quit was a significant predictor of "use of any modality" and both Perceived Need for Treatment and Motivation to Quit were significant predictors of "use or attempted use". Findings support the importance of the individual's perception of "readiness" to change their substance-abusing behavior and enter treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the results of a confirmatory factor analysis expanding and enhancing a previously developed measure of "machismo" both to explore the dimensionality of the measure and to test the invariance of factor structure in a sample of Anglo, African American, and Mexican American adult male drinkers. Specifically, this article (a) describes the development of a multidimensional 13-item machismo measure, (b) tests the goodness of fit of a series of confirmatory factor models examining single versus multiple factor solutions (e.g., Does a unitary machismo factor fit, or must positive and negative dimensions be modeled?), and (c) tests the invariance of the resulting model across racial-ethnic groups. Results support the use of the measures for cross-ethnic studies and emphasize the importance of a multidimensional measure including both positive and negative dimensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Although great emphasis has been placed on educating the public regarding HIV and sexually trasmitted disease (STD)prevention, equally important is provider education, as primary care and other health care practitioners have considerable potential for patienteducation.Recentreviews ofthe continuing medical education (CME) literature 1,2 have proposed the need for innovative educational approaches, suggesting limited support for the effectiveness of traditional didactic 1-day or shorter conferences that do not specifically involve enabling or reinforcing approaches such as role modeling, rehearsal, and case discussion. 2 Purposes: To examine short-term (2-month)and long-term (12-month)effects of the interventions with regard to STD knowledge, attitudes toward STD/HIV risk assessment,and frequencyofboth STDdiagnosis and STDpatienteducation and counseling. Methods: Pre- and postintervention (2-month and 12-month)data were obtained from a CME conference (n = 32) and 3 Clinic Workshop interventions (n = 93) held in South Texas. Results: Consistentpre-postgains in outcome measures were found in both CMEand CWmodels and among both STD practitioners and nonpractitioners among participants with lower initial knowledge or practice levels. Analyses did not support the posited facilitative effect of having multiple staff members from specific clinics in the CWcondition. Conclusions: For both models,significantgains frombaseline were found among those with initially lower knowledge/practice levels for knowledge and attitude dimensions, with the largest gains observed for patient education/counseling frequency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study examined career pathways and current work patterns for 110 graduates of an internship program. Results show that the group trained after 1980 went into private practice more rapidly than those trained prior to 1980. Both groups do extensive psychological testing. Implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data from a community sample of 1,784 Anglo, African-American, and Mexican-American adults were examined to assess: (I) the nature and magnitude of observed racial/ethnic and acculturation level differences in depression, (2) the relative contribution of sociodemographic and psychosocial factors (fatalism and religiosity) to observed differences, and (3) the joint effects of fatalism and religiosity as sociocultural resources with regard to depression in differing racial/ethnic and acculturation level subgroups. Analyses indicate the most dramatic differences in depression among males- African Americans were roughly similar to Anglos and levels of depression were significantly higher among the least acculturated Mexican Americans relative to Anglos, even after statistical controls. Acculturation level differences among Mexican-American females were explained by statistical controls. Lower levels of depression among more highly acculturated than among less acculturated Mexican Americans provide little support for a simplistic stress formulation of acculturation. Rather, the interplay of acculturation, Fatalism, and religiosity supports a more complex cultural marginality model, emphasizing the consistency of attitudinal elements and language use as facilitators or inhibitors of assimilation into Anglo culture. Both those who successfully acculturate and those who are most insulated in traditional culture appear least depressed from this perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the article, the author comments on the article "Who's to Blame for Limited Health Care Use by the Poor," by Diana B. Dutton, published in the June 1978 issue of the journal "American Sociological Review." According to the author, Dutton offers what appears to be a clear-cut test of role of costs, attitudes, and health care system factors in explaining health care use by the poor. As her study has far reaching policy implications, both her findings and conclusions merit serious scrutiny. By glossing the composition of her sample and by restricting her analytic focus to the three explanations noted above, she fails to grasp what is taking place in the data. Dutton's findings appear to have profound implications for policy. Rather than "blaming the victim." Dutton concluded that one should place the blame where it belongs--on the system. The author argues that both internal and external validity are problematic in Dutton's study. The basic generalizability problem stems from the racial composition of the sample. At issue is whether the findings are applicable to the poor as the article implies, or to the black poor, as the sample composition would suggest.

The aim of this study was to conduct a review of articles about tobacco or alcohol published from 1980 to 2010 in the Journal of the American Dental Association (JADA), Journal of Dental Education (JDE), and Journal of Public Health Dentistry (JPHD) in an attempt to identify trends by decade in topics relevant to oral health consequences, oral cancer linkages, and cessation counseling. NVivo qualitative analysis software was used to code abstracts using the keywords "tobacco" or "alcohol." The search identified 269 articles: tobacco=211 (78%), alcohol=58 (22%). This number represented 2.4% of the total articles published in these journals for the specified years. While the percentage of tobacco-related articles increased over this period (with highs in the 1990s of 4.1% in the JDE and 9% in the JPHD), the percentage of alcohol articles reached only 1% for JADA and 3.3% for the JPHD in the 2000s. The number of tobacco-related articles addressing oral health effects, oral cancer linkages, and cessation counseling increased in the 1990s. Although there were modest increases in the number of articles about alcohol-related oral health effects and oral cancer linkages (particularly in the JPHD in the 2000s), only two articles (in JADA in the 2000s) addressed alcohol cessation counseling. This study concluded that tobacco and alcohol have received limited, though increasing, attention in these three major journals between 1980 and 2010, with alcohol receiving less attention than tobacco. These results suggest a need for more published studies on tobacco and alcohol interventions in dental and allied dental education to prepare students to contribute to this aspect of their patients' health.

In order to examine the relative importance of general individual orientations (mastery and self-esteem) and specific coping styles with regard to psychological distress among women with HIV, data are examined from a pilot study involving in-depth face-to-face interviews with 32 HIV+ Latinas receiving care at 4 clinics serving the South Texas population. Interviews were conducted to provide preliminary psychometric information on coping and distress instruments in this predominantly Mexican American population as well as to examine psychosocial factors related to individual adjustment to HIV among Latina females. Refusal rates were low in this study (approximately 10%) and measurement instruments generally had acceptable internal consistency reliability. Results of exploratory multiple regression analyses suggest that self-esteem and mastery may be more salient predictors of depression and anxiety symptoms than are specific coping strategies.