OBJECTIVE To explore whether distance to and density of food outlets within the local area have an impact on individual dietary quality, controlling for the socioeconomic characteristics of individuals and their households. METHODS An analysis of the Survey of Lifestyle, Attitudes and Nutrition in Ireland (SLÁN), a two-stage clustered sample of 10,364 individuals aged 18+ from the Republic of...

STUDY OBJECTIVE To analyse if socioeconomic characteristics in area of living affect the risk of myocardial infarction in a Swedish urban population, and to evaluate to what extent the contextual effect is confounded by the individual exposures. DESIGN A population based case-referent study (SHEEP). SETTING Cases (n=1631) were all incident first events of myocardial infarction during 1992-1...

STUDY OBJECTIVE To examine the effect of socioeconomic status on pregnancy outcome in an urbanised area in a rapidly developing country. METHODS A cohort of 1797 pregnant women who attended antenatal care clinics at the two 700 bed hospitals in Hatyai city was recruited from September 1994 to November 1995. The pregnant women were followed up from the 17th week of gestation until delivery. Th...

Once considered a disease of affluence and confined to industrialized nations, obesity is currently emerging as a major health concern in nearly every country in the world. Available data suggest that the prevalence rate of obesity has reached unprecedented levels in most developing countries, and is increasing at a rate that far outpaces that of developed nations. This increase in obesity has ...

BACKGROUND To assess the implementation challenge facing the Third Report of the Adult Treatment Panel (ATP III) of the National Cholesterol Education Program, we determined the prevalence, treatment, and control of dyslipidemia, including ethnic and gender differences, in persons free of known clinical cardiovascular disease (CVD). In addition, this report provides information about the presen...

The fact that women are more religious than men is one of the most consistent findings in the sociology of religion. Miller and Stark (2002) propose that a gender difference in riskpreference of physiological origin might explain this phenomenon. While acknowledging the utility of their risk-preference mechanism, we believe that their assumption regarding the genesis of this difference is a pre...

BACKGROUND Low socioeconomic position predicts risk of substance abuse, yet few studies tested the role of preexisting familial and individual characteristics. METHODS Data come from the TEMPO (Trajectoires Epidémiologiques en Population) study (community sample in France, 1991-2009, n=1103, 22-35 years in 2009) set up among offspring of participants of an epidemiological study (GAZEL). Past ...

PURPOSE Although the link between depression and lower levels of mastery is well established, limited information exists on ethnic and gender differences in the association between the two. The current study investigated ethnic, gender, and ethnic by gender differences in the link between major depressive disorder (MDD) and low mastery in the United States. METHODS We used data from the Natio...

The indigenous Austronesian minority of Taiwan is heavily affected by health disparities which may include suffering from a greater burden of the tobacco epidemic. While a lack of representative data has historically precluded an investigation of the differences in smoking between Taiwanese ethnicities, these data have recently become available through an annual population-based telephone surve...

OBJECTIVES To investigate the importance of both individual and neighbourhood socioeconomic characteristics for health care utilization. METHODS Various linkage procedures generated a longitudinal dataset with information on 2,116 Nova Scotians, their residential neighbourhoods, 8 years of health care utilization and vital status. Unilevel and multilevel regression analyses were employed to e...