Biomedical subjects

N D Brener

Publications and source records attributed to N D Brener.

25 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

PubMed1999

The impact of condom availability [correction of distribution] in Seattle schools on sexual behavior and condom use.

OBJECTIVES: Ten Seattle high schools made condoms available through vending machines, baskets in school clinics, or both. This study measured the number of condoms that students obtained and subsequent changes in sexual behavior and condom use. METHODS: Schoolwide surveys were administered in spring 1993 and in spring 1995, before and during the condom availability program. These data were compared with data from nationally representative surveys administered at the same time. RESULTS: Seattle students obtained an average of 4.6 condoms per year, the vast majority from baskets and very few from vending machines. Relative to the national samples, the percentage of Seattle students who had ever had sex remained stable after the program began; current sexual activity decreased significantly; and the percentage of sexually experienced students who used a condom the last time they had sex decreased significantly, particularly in the 5 schools with baskets of condoms in clinics. CONCLUSIONS: Making condoms available in Seattle schools enabled students to obtain relatively large numbers of condoms but did not lead to increases in either sexual activity or condom use.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1998

Co-occurrence of health-risk behaviors among adolescents in the United States.

PURPOSE: Although it is common for adolescents to experiment with several health-risk behaviors before reaching adulthood, little is known about the co-occurrence of these behaviors. The purposes of this study were to determine the co-occurrence of specific health-risk behaviors among a nationally representative sample of adolescents, and to examine whether the distribution of multiple risk behaviors varies by age, sex, and school enrollment status. METHODS: This study analyzed survey data from a United States national probability sample (n = 10,645) of youth aged 12-21 years. Survey items measuring current seat belt use, weapon carrying, tobacco, alcohol, and other drug use, and sexual behavior were included in the analysis. RESULTS: The majority of adolescents aged 12-17 years did not engage in multiple health-risk behaviors. However, the prevalence of multiple risk behaviors increased dramatically with age. While only 1 in 12 adolescents aged 12-13 years engaged in two or more of these behaviors, one-third of those aged 14-17 years and half of the college-aged youth (18-21 years) did so. Male respondents and out-of-school youth aged 14-17 years were more likely to engage in multiple health-risk behaviors than were other respondents. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that the likelihood that adolescents engage in multiple health-risk behaviors is related to age and that many adolescents engage in these behaviors serially rather than at the same time.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1997

Nurses' logs as an evaluation tool for school-based violence prevention programs.

Programs for preventing violence among youth should be evaluated to determine if they are effective. Nurses' logs appear to be a useful tool for evaluating school-based violence prevention programs. The logs provide a record of students' visits to the school nurse that can be used to determine if a violence prevention program is associated with a reduction in fighting- and other injury-related nurse visits. This method has many strengths: it is simple and inexpensive, it does not interrupt the school routine, it permits school-level rather than student-level data collection, it provides a ready "baseline," and it allows continuous data collection. However, potential limitations do exist. For example, the method may provide insufficient information and may be affected by factors unrelated to the intervention. School officials can increase the usefulness of the logs by encouraging standardization and providing training in their use.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1995

Reliability of the Youth Risk Behavior Survey Questionnaire.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) has been used on a biennial basis since 1990 to measure health risk behaviors of high school students nationwide. The YRBS measures behaviors related to intentional and unintentional injury, tobacco use, alcohol and other drug use, sexual activity, diet, and physical activity. The authors present the results from a test-retest reliability study of the YRBS, conducted by administering the YRBS questionnaire to 1,679 students in grades 7 through 12 on two occasions 14 days apart. The authors computed a kappa statistic for each of 53 self-report items and compared group prevalence estimates across the two testing occasions. Kappas ranged from 14.5% to 91.1%; 71.7% of the items were rated as having "substantial" or higher reliability (kappa = 61-100%). No significant differences were found between the prevalence estimates at time 1 and time 2. Responses of seventh grade students were less consistent than those of students in higher grades, indicating that the YRBS is best suited for students in grade 8 and above. Except for a few suspect items, students appeared to report personal health risk behaviors reliably over time. Reliability and validity issues in health behavior assessment also are discussed.

Adolescent↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Timing of alcohol and other drug use and sexual risk behaviors among unmarried adolescents and young adults.

CONTEXT: Although alcohol and drug use by young people has been associated with sexual risk behavior in some research, detailed data are lacking on the timing of substance use in relationship to sexual risk-taking. METHODOLOGY: Cross-sectional data on 7,441 unmarried young people aged 14-22 from the 1992 Youth Risk Behavior Survey (household supplement) were used in the analysis. Alcohol and other drug use at last sexual intercourse, substance use in the past 30 days (recent use), the number of different substances ever used (lifetime use) and age at initiation of alcohol use are examined here. The outcome variables assessed through multivariate regression analyses were condom use at last intercourse and more than one sexual partner in the past three months. RESULTS: Failure to use a condom was strongly associated with the lifetime substance-use scale or, alternatively, with age at initiation of alcohol. Once the number of substances ever used was controlled for, neither substance use at last sexual intercourse nor recent use was associated with the likelihood of using a condom at last coitus. Among young men and women, recent substance use and use of either alcohol or drugs at last intercourse were both strongly associated with having had more than one sexual partner in the past three months. For females only, lifetime use also increased the probability of recent multiple partners. CONCLUSIONS: The relationships between alcohol and other drug use and two sexual behaviors--condom use and multiple partners-suggest distinct mechanisms of influence and the need for different prevention strategies.

Adolescent↗

PubMedDate not supplied

The impact of an elementary school-based violence prevention program on visits to the school nurse.

INTRODUCTION: In Tucson, Arizona, an elementary school-based violence prevention program (PeaceBuilders) was implemented during the 1994-1995 school year. Anecdotal evidence from school nurses suggested that children were visiting the nurse less often following the implementation of the program. We examined nurses' logs to assess whether the program had an impact on visits to the school nurse. METHODS: For the school years 1993-1994 and 1994-1995, the weekly number of nurse visits for all reasons, all injuries, and injuries caused by fights in each of the four PeaceBuilders schools were compared with those for three control schools. As part of a planned evaluation, schools had been matched on demographic factors and randomly assigned as intervention or control schools. RESULTS: Between 1993-1994 and 1994-1995, the rate of visits/1,000 student days decreased 12.6% in the intervention schools while remaining unchanged in the comparison schools. The same trend was detected for injury-related visits. Rates of fighting-related injuries changed little in the intervention schools but increased 56.0% in the control schools. An analysis of covariance confirmed that injuries and visits to nurses decreased in intervention schools relative to control schools. CONCLUSIONS: These data indicate that in the intervention schools, injuries and visits to the school nurse decreased over the two-year period and that the intervention may have contributed to this change. They also suggest that visits to the school nurses' office may be a useful tool to evaluate some types of elementary school-based violence prevention programs.

Arizona↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Multiple sexual partners among U.S. adolescents and young adults.

CONTEXT: Because many teenagers and young adults fail to use condoms correctly and consistently, the number of sexual partners they have is an important risk factor for sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV. Identifying factors that are associated with having multiple partners can help in the design of disease interventions. METHODS: Data on 8,450 males and females aged 14-22 who participated in the 1992 Youth Risk Behavior Survey were used to examine the prevalence of and factors associated with young people's having multiple partners. RESULTS: In all, 63% of female respondents and 64% of males were sexually experienced. Among those who had had sex during the three months before the survey, 15% and 35%, respectively, had had two or more partners during that period. At each age, the majority of sexually experienced respondents had had more than one lifetime partner; between ages 14 and 21, the proportion who had had six or more rose from 8% to 31% among females and from 14% to 45% among males. In logistic regression analyses, alcohol use, illicit drug use and young age at first coitus were associated with increased odds that females had had two or more partners in the previous three months, and being married lowered the odds; black or Hispanic race or ethnicity, alcohol use and young age at first coitus increased the odds for males, and being married reduced the odds. As the number of reported alcohol-related behaviors increased, the adjusted proportion of respondents who had recently had multiple partners rose from 8% to 48% among females and from 23% to 61% among men. CONCLUSIONS: The strong association between alcohol use and having multiple sexual partners underscores the need to educate young people about the effects of alcohol on partner choice and the risk of infection with sexually transmitted diseases.

Adolescent↗