Dear Editor, After perusing the report by Vardavas and Kafatos, on smoking policy and prevalence in Greece, we thought that would be of interest to demonstrate the findings of our study concerning the urban-rural differences in smoking prevalence. The study was conducted during the recent election day (15 October 2006) in the municipality of Salamis and Nemea. The first represent an urban area ...

Two gridded data sets that included (1) daily mean temperatures from 2006 through 2011 and (2) satellite-derived impervious surface area, were combined for a spatial analysis of the urban heat-island effect within the Dallas-Ft. Worth Texas region. The primary advantage of using these combined datasets included the capability to designate each 1 1 km grid cell of available temperature data as u...

Almost 90 per cent of people in Britain live in urban areas and just over half the population are resident in 66 urban areas with populations of 100,000 or more. These and a wide range of key results from the 1991 Census have been published for all urban areas in Great Britain, updating information that was prepared for the first time after the 1981 Census. This article summarises the socio-dem...

INTRODUCTION Most women spend one-third to half of their lifespan in the postmenopausal phase. As menopause involves biological and psychosocial changes that may significantly impair quality of life, the objectives of this study were to: (1) evaluate the prevalence of risk factors for osteoporosis and cardiovascular disease and the prevalence and severity of the appearance of menopausal symptom...

OBJECTIVE Investigate differences in the infectious aetiology, health seeking behaviour, and provider practices with regard to diarrhoeal illness among children presenting to urban versus rural clinics in Western Kenya. DESIGN Laboratory-based, passive surveillance. SETTING The urban portion of the study was conducted at the paediatric outpatient clinic of Nyanza Provincial Hospital in Kisu...

Adequate health care services are often not available in rural and remote areas, and this problem is expected to grow worse in the near future. "Telehealth" interventions represent a strategy for addressing access to care problems. We examined and compared attitudes toward medical and mental health care delivered via telehealth applications among adult rural (n = 112) and urban (n = 78) primary...

BACKGROUND The aim of this study was to describe and to compare the cancer mortality rates in urban and rural residents in Lithuania. METHODS Cancer mortality has been studied using the materials of the Lithuanian cancer registry. For the period 1993-2004 age-standardized urban and rural population mortality rates (World standard) were calculated for all malignant neoplasm's and for stomach, ...

In 1999 the Victorian primary care and community support system began a process of substantial reform, involving purchasing reforms and a contested selection process between providers in large catchment areas across the State. The Liberal Government's electoral defeat in September 1999 led to a review of these reforms. This paper questions the reforms from a rural perspective. They were based o...

In this review, our aim was to examine the influence of geographic variations on asthma prevalence and morbidity among adults, which is important for improving our understanding, identifying the burden, and for developing and implementing interventions aimed at reducing asthma morbidity. Asthma is a complex inflammatory disease of multifactorial origin, and is influenced by both environmental a...