The majority of children with cancer receive therapy as participants in clinical research protocols coordinated by national pediatric cooperative groups. One of the highest priorities of these groups is the development of novel therapies. Due to differences in the biology of pediatric and adult tumors and in physiology between adults and children, it is usually necessary to evaluate the safety ...

This yearmarks the 50th anniversary of the 1964 Surgeon General’s Report on Smoking and Health. This landmark publication found adefinitive, causal linkbetween smoking and lung cancer in men, and, along with the subsequent reports, spurred a series of important public health initiatives that have stemmed the tide of tobacco-related death and disease in the United States. When Surgeon General Lu...

BACKGROUND Most smokers have their first experience of cigarette use when they are teenagers (i.e. at schools). Aiming tobacco control initiatives at secondary school students offers preventive measures to eliminate or reduce tobacco use initiation by students. This study assessed smoking-related attitudes, motives and behavior as well as other factors associated with smoking among male seconda...

BACKGROUND The aim of this study was to quantify and compare the burden of disease attributable to five major lifestyle-related risk factors in a UK Primary Care Trust (Wirral) using World Health Organizations' (WHO) comparative risk assessment (CRA) methodology to demonstrate its practical utility for informing local policy initiatives. METHODS WHO CRA methodology was adopted using exposure ...

It seems clear that parental smoking is harmful, although the magnitude of its effect may be smaller than sometimes suggested. However, smoking and other behaviours detrimental to health must be seen within a social and historical context. Individuals are not 'free choosing actors' and their behaviour is determined, at least in part, by their social and environmental circumstances. Smoking migh...

Previous studies have described links between violence, decreased condom use and drug sharing among intimate partners, though limited information exists about the predictors of drug sharing among female sex workers and their clients. The following analysis explored the association between sharing illicit drugs with clients and sexual and drug-related harms among survival sex workers. A total of...

This article introduces a new column which will explore the way different regions and nation states are dealing with the challenges of managing health information. The intention is to draw together trends which are relevant to both health science librarians and health informatics professionals. This inaugural piece maps out the territory. It provides a rationale for the column, along with evide...

I n recent years, few notions have so fully captured the corporate imagination as that of corporate social responsibility (CSR), defined broadly as a company’s “status and activities with respect to its perceived societal or, at least, stakeholder obligations.” While CSR is by no means a new idea, more companies than ever before are backing CSR initiatives such as corporate philanthropy, cause-...

Mauritius forms part of the Mascarene Islands of the Indian Ocean and is situated ca. 700 km to the east of Madagascar at latitude 20 degrees S and longitude 57.5 degrees E. Mauritius has jurisdiction over a proclaimed Exclusive Economic Zone that stretches over 1,900,000 km2. This extensive area holds an immense potential for exploration and presents a wide range of scientific and industrial c...

lthough Global 2000 organizations today are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of a metrics program to maximize the effectiveness of an information security strategy, there’s little guidance available around the practical “how to’s” of putting such a program into practice. As a result, security metrics are shrouded in mystery and are considered “too hard” to do — with the end result ...