BACKGROUND Emergency contraception (EC) is widely available free of charge at public sector clinics in South Africa. At the same time, rates of teenage and unintended pregnancy in South Africa remain high, and there are few data on knowledge of EC in the general population in South Africa, as in other resource-limited settings. METHODS We conducted a cross-sectional, interviewer-administered ...

The global burden of injuries is enormous, but has often been overlooked in attempts to improve health. We review measures that would strengthen existing efforts to prevent and treat injuries worldwide. Scientifically-based efforts to understand risk factors for the occurrence of injury are needed and they must be translated into prevention programmes that are well designed and assessed. Areas ...

Little published information concerning the growth characteristics of Lebanese infants is available. Woodruff (1965) noted that 80 infants receiving 'well' child care, and presumably privileged socioeconomically, had a growth pattern identical to the Iowa Growth Charts. Less privileged infants grew similarly only in the first 4 to 6 months, and subsequently their growth performance was below pa...

Background: Household food insecurity is defined as the limited or uncertain access to adequate and safe food or limited ability to obtain food in a socially acceptable manner. Preeclampsia is a severe case of high-risk pregnancy, which endangers the health of women across the world, especially in developing countries. The current study aimed to use the nutritional deficiencies theory in pathog...

Life history theory predicts that developmental exposure to conditions typical of low socioeconomic status (SES) should calibrate development in ways that promote survivability in harsh and unpredictable ecologies. Guided by these insights, the current research tested the hypothesis that low childhood SES would predict eating in the absence of energy need. Across three studies, we measured (Stu...

Socioeconomic status (SES) has a documented impact on brain and cognitive development. We demonstrate that engaging spatial selective attention mechanisms may counteract this negative influence of impoverished environments on early learning. We previously used a spatial cueing task to compare target object encoding in the context of basic orienting ("facilitation") versus a spatial selective at...

BACKGROUND In humans, low socioeconomic status (SES) across the life course is associated with greater diurnal cortisol production, increased inflammatory activity and higher circulating antibodies for several pathogens, all suggesting a dampened immune response. Recent evidence suggests that DNA methylation of pro-inflammatory genes may be implicated in the biological embedding of the social e...

STUDY OBJECTIVE To examine whether young, especially low socioeconomic status (SES), females are influenced by tobacco control policies in terms of smoking initiation and transition to more adverse stages of smoking behaviour from adolescence to young adulthood. DESIGN AND SETTING Data from 2697 young female respondents to the national longitudinal study of adolescent health wave 1 (1994-1995...