A prospective study of half a million adults living in the city of Chennai (formerly Madras) arose out of discussions at the 1994 International Cancer Congress in Delhi about how to assess the effects of tobacco on health in different parts of India. Chennai is the capital of the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu, and it is India’s fourth most populous city. Two large-scale epidemiological studi...

It is apparent from the results of the 1995 and 1998 surveys reported by Kimm et al in this issue of Pediatrics that pediatricians are interested in blood pressure and lipids but uncertain about the management of these coronary heart disease (CHD) risk factors. Data from longitudinal epidemiologic studies initiated in pediatric cohorts support the important role for pediatricians in the detecti...

I n their paper Subramanian and colleagues show us that both individual and community level health and happiness tend to covary but that the community level health-happiness covariation is quite a bit stronger than that for individuals. Their approach is novel in that they examine the covariation in these two outcomes nested within individuals who are in turn nested within USA communities. The ...

Epidemiologic studies of farmers have linked pesticides with certain cancers. Information on exposures from many of these studies was obtained by interview of farmers or their next-of-kin. The reliability and validity of data on pesticide use obtained by recall, often years after the event, have been questioned. Pesticide use, however, is an integral component in most agricultural operations, a...

The Nordic countries have a long tradition of register-based epidemiologic studies. Numerous population-based specialized registers offer high-quality data from individuals, and the extensive use of register data further improves the quality of the registers. Unique personal identity codes given to every resident and used in all registers guarantee easy and accurate record linkage. A legislatio...

BACKGROUND Chronic pain is a major public health problem. The impact of stages of chronic pain adjusted for disease load on societal burden has not been assessed in population surveys. METHODS A cross-sectional survey with 4360 people aged  ≥ 14 years representative of the German population was conducted. Measures obtained included demographic variables, presence of chronic pain (based on the...

Little has been written on the challenges of conducting research in regions or countries with chronic conflict and strife. In this paper we share our experiences in conducting a population based study of chronic diseases in the occupied Palestinian territory and describe the challenges faced, some of which were unique to a conflict zone area, while others were common to low- and middle- income ...

Of the commonly accepted tools for assessing habitual dietary intake in epidemiological studies, the one that is most often used in population surveys is the food frequency questionnaire (FFQ) (Briefel et al., 1992; Kushi, 1994). When using the FFQ, the results generally represent usual intakes over an extended period and are easier to collect and process. The FFQ is then used to study associat...

Mobile phone use, predominantly smartphones, is almost ubiquitous amongst both adults and children. However adults and children have different usage patterns. A major challenge with research on mobile phone use is the reliability of self-reported phone activity for accurate exposure assessment. We investigated the agreement between self-reported mobile phone use data and objective mobile operat...

OBJECTIVE To identify factors associated with exclusive breastfeeding in the first six months of life in Brazil. METHODS Systematic review of epidemiological studies conducted in Brazil with exclusive breastfeeding as outcome. Medline and LILACS databases were used. After the selection of articles, a hierarchical theoretical model was proposed according to the proximity of the variable to the...