I found an interesting post on Simoleon Sense today about simplicity.  The topic might not be exclusively “public health,” however, the ideas from the article are applicable to the field of public health in the terms of policy development, research, development of health interventions, etc.

Post from Simoleon Sense

(original source: PSYBLOG)

The following three articles are from Medical News Today and are interesting reads. The first article interested me as I will begin working on developing an obesity education interventions for young children and their mothers. I posted the second article because I’m a coffee drinker and any data that supports the benefits of coffee is okay by me! The third post (even though it’s not nutrition related) came from TED (my favorite website): The speaker, Eric Dishman “makes a bold argument: The US health care system is like computing circa 1959, tethered to big, unwieldy central systems: hospitals, doctors, nursing homes. As our aging population booms, it’s imperative, he says, to create personal, networked, home-based health care for all.”

1) What’s Mom’s Influence On Baby’s Obesity Risk?

Aspiring moms may be advised to achieve a healthy weight before they become pregnant, and to gain only the recommended amount of weight during their pregnancy. Now ongoing studies by Agricultural Research Service (ARS)-funded investigator Kartik Shankar and colleagues could provide new insights into those recommendations. Shankar is taking a new, closer look at how influences that occur in the womb – and perhaps during the first few months of life – might affect development of a child’s ability to regulate his or her weight later in life.

2) More Support For Health Benefits Of Coffee

Multitudes of people worldwide begin each day with a cup of steaming hot coffee. Although it is sometimes referred to as “the devil’s brew,” coffee contains several nutrients (eg, calcium) as well as hundreds of potentially biologically active compounds (eg, polyphenols) that may promote health. For instance, observational studies have suggested a beneficial link between coffee consumption and type 2 diabetes. Determining whether or not this association is causative, however, requires controlled intervention trials. Two articles published in the April 2010 issue of The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition report results of 2 studies conducted to lend additional information concerning the potential health benefits of coffee. These studies provide additional support for the emerging health benefits of coffee. Rigorous clinical intervention trials will be needed to understand more fully the biological mechanisms.

3) Eric Dishman: Take health care off the main frame

Original Post

(source: Kaiser Family Foundation)

This analysis finds prices for some commonly used brand-name drugs rising in 2010 for beneficiaries who reach the coverage gap (or “doughnut hole”), with increases since 2006 far exceeding the growth in inflation.

The Part D benefit’s coverage gap generally requires enrollees to pay the full cost of their drugs after their total drug spending exceeds their initial coverage limit ($2,830 in 2010) until they reach the threshold for receiving catastrophic coverage ($6,440 in 2010).  In 2007, an estimated 3.4 million Part D enrollees reached the coverage gap.

Using data posted on the government’s Medicare.gov website, the analysis looks at prices for commonly used brand-name drugs without a generic substitute for enrollees in stand-alone prescription drug plans.  The prices reflect the amount that enrollees would pay for a 30-day supply after they reach the coverage gap and before catastrophic coverage begins.

The spotlight is one in a series analyzing key aspects of the Medicare Part D drug plans that will be available to beneficiaries in 2010. These spotlights were prepared by a team of researchers at Georgetown University, NORC and the Kaiser Family Foundation.

I recently submitted the following paper about community-based participatory research (CBPR). For those who are not familiar with CBPR, it’s a “postnormal” approach to qualitative research by involving stakeholders, from the target community, in the whole research approach. Here is a Wikipedia link about CBPR.

By Ali Al-Rajhi

Discussing Community Based Participatory Research in relation to obesity

Citation for the main paper :

Goh, Y., Bogart, L.M., Sipple-Asher, B.K. et al. (2009). Using community-based participatory research to identify potential interventions to overcome barriers to adolescents’ healthy eating and physical activity. Journal of Behavioral Medicine 32(5), 491-502.

Key Points from Goh et al. (2009):

Goh and his research team implemented a community-based participatory approach (CBPR) to explore barriers to healthy eating and physical activity amongst adolescents. Through the CBPR approach, community participants (adolescents, parents, stakeholders) provided possible intervention ideas to address obesity amongst adolescents. The research follows the nine CBPR principles as defined by Israel, Eng, Schulz, and Parker (2005) in their book “Methods in Community-Based Participatory Research for Health”:

1)    Acknowledgement of community

2)    Builds upon strengths within the community

3)    Facilitates collaborative partnerships

4)    Fosters capacity building

5)    Achieves benefits for all partners

6)    Focuses on locally relevant health issues

7)    Systems development

8)    Dissemination of results

9)    Long-term sustainability

Key Point 1: Involving the community in intervention development leads to increased program effectiveness and sustainability since community is heavily invested in the intervention development process. For example, Goh et al. (2009) demonstrate that a CBPR approach leads to the design of a more effective school based intervention that address obesity in adolescents

Key Point 2: CBPR is useful for identifying interventions that are acceptable to community members; “community involvement in intervention development and testing is essential for program effectiveness and sustainability” (Goh et al, 2009).

Key Point 3: Data from focus groups can identify important topics and themes of the community (e.g., Los Angeles Unified School District) and lead to the development of interventions that address the community’s issue (e.g., eating barriers and physical activity barriers). For example, findings from Goh’s research suggest that effective school-based interventions to improve healthy eating should improve both the food and beverage offered in school cafeterias and nutrition labeling.

Key Point 4: Data from CBPR initiatives may provide stronger support for policy change (Goh et al, 2009).

Citation for the comparison paper:

Bidwell, D. (2009). Is community-based participatory research postnormal science? Science, Technology & Human Values 34(6), 741-761.

• Bidwell’s article extends the ideas presented by Goh as he suggests that CBPR  is a response “to the shortcomings of normal science” within the health research community (e.g., low participation and lack of trust of out researchers). Goh states that “prior research (in relation to adolescent obesity) has not elicited a broad range of community views” (Goh et al., 2009). In other words, not many health initiatives, such as obesity prevention interventions, have involved community members to the level that CBPR has done. CBPR allows community members to be directly involved in “doing the science” which will benefit the community’s health (Bidwell, 2009).

1) University Of Florida Researchers Find Cancer-fighting Properties In Papaya Tea (source: Medical News Today)

The humble papaya is gaining credibility in Western medicine for anticancer powers that folk cultures have recognized for generations.
University of Florida researcher Nam Dang, M.D., Ph.D., and colleagues in Japan have documented papaya’s dramatic anticancer effect against a broad range of lab-grown tumors, including cancers of the cervix, breast, liver, lung and pancreas.

2) Meat And Colorectal Cancer Risk: Scientists Suggest Potential Mechanisms (source: Medical News Today)

Scientists in the US who undertook a large study to investigate what biological mechanisms might be behind the already established link between colorectal cancer and consumption of red and processed meat, confirmed that such a link exists and suggested the main players are three compounds: heme iron, nitrate/nitrite, and heterocyclic amines.

3) Fresh vegetables? Think again (source: Nutrition Data)

A new study finds that frozen vegetables, which are usually processed within hours of being harvested, may contain more of certain nutrients than “fresh” vegetables, which may be weeks old by the time they’re consumed. This latest study was funded by Birds-eye, but it’s actually nothing we didn’t already know. According to the USDA, fresh vegetables can lose up to 50% of their nutritional value after just one or two days of room temperature storage or one to two weeks of cold storage.

4) Vitamins Stored in Bathrooms, Kitchens May Become Less Effective (source: Science Daily)

High humidity present in bathrooms and kitchens could be degrading the vitamins and health supplements stored in those rooms, even if the lids are on tight, a Purdue University study shows.