Community surveys are essential to estimate health indicators, evaluate health programs, and define health interventions. In 2002, a cross-sectional survey of children under five was conducted in 18 areas of the poorest counties in North and Northeast Brazil. Nine areas were visited by volunteer community health workers (CHW) under the Children's Mission, and the others were not visited. Using ...

The Child Health Record (CHR) is an essential document for children's health care activities. A cross-sectional study was performed with simple random sampling, aimed at analyzing factors related to quality of data completion on the CHR. Interviews and direct verification of 365 CHRs from 9 health districts in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais State, Brazil, were performed. A scoring system was crea...

BACKGROUND The American Heart Association (AHA), Institute of Medicine (IOM), and US Departments of Health and Human Services and Agriculture (USDA) Dietary Guidelines for Americans all recommend that Americans limit sodium intake and choose foods that contain potassium to decrease the risk of hypertension and other adverse health outcomes. OBJECTIVE We estimated the distributions of usual da...

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of death in the United States. One-third of these deaths may be preventable through healthy lifestyle choices including diet and physical activity. The Mediterranean diet is associated with reduced cardiovascular mortality, whereas the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) eating plan is associated with a reduced risk of coronary artery...

Heart failure (HF) affects up to 20 per cent of residents in long-term care (LTC) and is associated with substantial morbidity, mortality, and health service utilization. Our study objective was to formulate recommendations on implementing HF care processes in LTC. A three-phase and iterative stakeholder consultation process, guided by expert panel input, was employed to develop recommendations...

Responding to high prevalence of hypertension and patients' preference of integrating traditional Chinese medicine for blood pressure control, the Dietary Approach to Stop Hypertension With Sodium Reduction for Chinese Canadian (DASHNa-CC) intervention was newly designed as a culturally sensitive dietary educational intervention to facilitate middle-aged and senior Chinese Canadians' blood pres...

The recognition that nutritional status plays a role in altering susceptibility to lead absorption and toxicity has triggered the development of this review. There has been a significant increase worldwide in awareness and concern about the effects of lead on human health and the environment over the last two decades. Both occupational and environmental exposures to lead remain a serious proble...

BACKGROUND There are significant health status inequalities in Australia between those people living in rural and remote locations and people living in metropolitan centres. Since almost ninety percent of the population use some form of primary health care service annually, a logical initial step in reducing the disparity in health status is to improve access to health care by specifying those ...

OBJECTIVE Many health professional groups recommend folic acid supplementation for all women able to become pregnant. In this study, we document folic acid supplement use among a sample of women receiving routine gynecologic care. METHODS A short questionnaire was administered to 322 women aged 18-45 years who were seeking routine gynecologic care at participating clinics in Little Rock, Arka...