Health Disparities

  Diets rich in dark-green and orange vegetables have been associated with a reduction in chronic diseases. However, most Americans do not consume the number of daily servings recommended by the 2005 Dietary Guidelines for Americans. An increasing number of studies suggest that changes to the neighborhood food environment may be critical to achieving population-wide improvements in eating.

 Objectives. We examined a community-based participatory diabetes intervention to identify facilitators of and barriers to sustained community efforts to address social factors that contribute to health.
Methods. We conducted a case study description and analysis of the Healthy Eating and Exercising to Reduce Diabetes project in the theoretical context of a conceptual model of social determinants of health.

 As the body of evidence linking disparities in the health of urban residents to disparate social, economic and environmental contexts grows, efforts to delineate the pathways through which broader social and economic inequalities influence health have burgeoned. One hypothesized pathway connects economic and racial and ethnic inequalities to differentials in stress associated with social and physical environments, with subsequent implications for health.

Prostate cancer is the most common cause of cancer in men and the second leading cause of cancer deaths. African-American men bear a disproportionate burden of prostate cancer diagnosis and mortality. Current guidelines for prostate cancer screening differ among various medical organizations. Therefore, it is important that African-American men have the appropriate information needed to make informed decisions about prostate cancer screening.

Successful outcomes for studies on health disparities depend on recruitment of research participants. Obtaining willing participants, protecting their rights, and acknowledging their contribution to research is as important as seeking answers to the study phenomena. Recruiting research participants can be an arduous process for investigators. Although literature has published participant recruitment methods, investigators sometimes underestimate the time and intensity required to attract eligible participants into research studies.

The purpose of this study was to determine the factors that are associated with the use of prescription medication to control asthma in California's African-American, Latino, and White children from 1 to 11 years of age. This was a secondary analysis of parental reports of the use of prescription medication by children with current asthma symptoms (defined as MD diagnosis of asthma). These children were identified from a cross-sectional survey called the California Health Interview Survey (CHIS), 2001. An overall sample of 1,313 children with current asthma was used in the study.