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Biomedical subjects

Robin Room

Publications and source records attributed to Robin Room.

42 records · Page 3Linked to original sources
PubMed1999

Checkered Expectations: Predictors of Approval of Opening a Casino in the Niagara Community.

This paper reports on the findings of a survey prior to the opening of a casino in Niagara Falls, Ontario (N= 1002 adults) on approval of the casino, expectations regarding the impact of the casino, attitudes toward gambling, gambling behaviour, and demographic information. The respondents generally had a positive attitude towards gambling. The expectations of community impact clustered into 3 factors: negative social consequences (crimes, addiction), negative environmental consequences (litter, noise, traffic), and positive economic consequences (jobs, stores, income). The majority of respondents expected economic benefits from the casino as well as a decrease in the environmental quality of the city. Expectations regarding social problems were mixed with a majority expecting an increase in serious crimes, but only a minority expecting an increase in people on welfare. Covariance structure modelling revealed that a positive attitude towards gambling and expecting economic benefits were positively related to approval of the casino, and expecting social problems was negatively related to approval. Given that more than seven in ten respondents supported the opening of the casino, the expected economic benefits coupled with a generally positive attitude towards gambling, apparently outweighed concerns about problems associated with gambling.

Journal Article↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Alcohol and public health.

Alcoholic beverages, and the problems they engender, have been familiar fixtures in human societies since the beginning of recorded history. We review advances in alcohol science in terms of three topics: the epidemiology of alcohol's role in health and illness; the treatment of alcohol use disorders in a public health perspective; and policy research and options. Research has contributed substantially to our understanding of the relation of drinking to specific disorders, and has shown that the relation between alcohol consumption and health outcomes is complex and multidimensional. Alcohol is causally related to more than 60 different medical conditions. Overall, 4% of the global burden of disease is attributable to alcohol, which accounts for about as much death and disability globally as tobacco and hypertension. Treatment research shows that early intervention in primary care is feasible and effective, and a variety of behavioural and pharmacological interventions are available to treat alcohol dependence. This evidence suggests that treatment of alcohol-related problems should be incorporated into a public health response to alcohol problems. Additionally, evidence-based preventive measures are available at both the individual and population levels, with alcohol taxes, restrictions on alcohol availability, and drinking-driving countermeasures among the most effective policy options. Despite the scientific advances, alcohol problems continue to present a major challenge to medicine and public health, in part because population-based public health approaches have been neglected in favour of approaches oriented to the individual that tend to be more palliative than preventative.

Alcohol Drinking↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Drinking patterns and their gender differences in Europe.

AIMS: To compare drinking habits and to examine differences between drinking cultures in different regions and countries in Europe; to examine gender differences in drinking habits and to compare them over countries. METHODS: Data consisted of independently conducted, centrally analysed surveys in the general population aged 20-64 years in 14 European countries. Central measures were abstention, frequency and volume of drinking overall and by beverage type, amounts drunk per drinking day, and heavy episodic drinking. RESULTS: There were clear gender differences in all drinking measures, except for wine drinking. Differences between genders were often smaller than average in northern Europe. Gender ratios did not show systematic changes by age, with the exception that young men and women differed less than older men and women in the frequency of heavy episodic drinking. The results on beverage preferences indicate that the distinction among wine/beer/spirits cultures have implicitly been based on male drinking. Our expectation was for more daily light drinking integrated in everyday life in the Mediterranean countries, more heavy episodic drinking associated with weekends and celebrations in the North, with the traditional beer countries somewhere in between. The differences observed were usually in the direction expected. However, no country represented an ideal type of drinking culture, i.e. drinking for 'mood-changing effects' only or for 'nutritional purposes' only; all countries were mixtures of these two extremes. CONCLUSIONS: There were clear and consistent gender differences in all countries, while the differences in drinking between countries and regions were not as obvious.

Adult↗