Search PubMed⌕ Search

SEARCH · Search PubMed

Results for “Income Distribution”

Search indexed PubMed citations on genomics, clinical trials, systematic reviews and public health. Explore titles, authors and supplied subject terms, then open the PubMed record.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 1,063 records · Page 59Linked to original sources
PubMed2001

Longitudinal predictors of depressive symptoms among low income injection drug users.

Effects of changes in physical health status and drug use, and prior social support on depressive symptoms were assessed in low income injection drug users. Data are from participants (n = 503) enrolled at baseline (1994-1995) who remained at one-year follow-up (79%), of whom 37% were HIV-positive and 36% female. Physical health was measured by HIV symptoms, AIDS, CD4 count and functional limitation (IADLs). One-third scored high on depressive symptoms (CES-D > or = 16) at one-year follow-up, representing no statistically significant change from baseline (38%). In multiple logistic regression, after controlling for baseline depression scores (OR = 6.11, p < 0.001) and drug use (OR = 1.20, p = 0.192), baseline functional limitation (OR = 3.28, p < 0.001) and declining functioning (OR = 3.60, p < 0.001) were positively, and quitting drug use was negatively, associated with depressive symptoms at follow-up. Low social support at baseline (OR = 0.58, p < 0.10) was marginally predictive of depressive symptoms. Depressive symptoms did not differ by gender. For HIV-positive respondents, functional limitation was predictive of depressive symptoms, but HIV illness and drug use were not. Facilitating drug treatment and preventive medical care may aid in reducing depression in this population. For HIV-positive drug users, drug treatment prior to AIDS may help reduce depressive symptoms, with potential implications for HIV service utilization and medical adherence.

Adult↗
PubMed2003

The views of people with a physical disability on day activity centres in the Eastern Region of Ireland.

PURPOSE: The overall aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of day activity centres in providing a service to physically disabled clients in the Eastern Region of Ireland. METHOD: Qualitative and quantitative methodologies were used. Four focus groups with clients were undertaken. This informed questionnaire content and design for subsequent quantitative work. Interviewer administered questionnaires were distributed to 156 randomly selected clients. Areas covered in the questionnaire included: demographic characteristics, income, living circumstances, medical information, access to day centre, activities at the centre, staff, outcome of attendance and satisfaction with the centre. RESULTS: There was a very positive response to the survey, all clients selected agreed to participate. The majority of clients were unmarried, unemployed and disabled due to a neurological disorder. While most lived in owner-occupied occupation, they were dependent on state benefits for their principal source of income. The majority of clients attended the centres for social and recreational reasons. Although there was a high level of satisfaction with the service overall, some aspects, such as availability of therapy and lack of continuity of staff are areas identified that need improvement. CONCLUSION: This study highlighted aspects of day activity services that clients value. The results of this evaluation should guide the proposed future development and expansion of this service.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2006

Economic barriers to better mental health practice and policy.

Mental health systems in many countries are seriously under-developed, yet mental health problems not only have huge consequences for quality of life, but--particularly in low- and middle-income countries--contribute to continued economic burden and reinforce poverty. This paper discusses economic barriers to improving the availability, accessibility, efficiency and equity of mental health care in low- and middle-income countries. Six sets of barriers are identified: an information barrier, resource insufficiency, resource distribution, resource inappropriateness, resource inflexibility and resource timing. Overcoming these barriers will be a major task, although there is no shortage of suggestions for action. The paper discusses broadening the evidence base, improving mental health literacy, tackling stigma, improving financing mechanisms, prioritizing and protecting mental health care budgets, emphasizing mental health promotion through the development of resilience, exploring routes to improved equity, experimenting with new arrangements for purchasing and delivering services, improving coordination between agencies and professionals at both macro- and micro-levels, building alliances between public and private sectors, and training and mobilizing primary care services to improve identification and treatment of mental health problems.

Developing Countries↗
PubMed2006

Effect of trauma systems on motor vehicle occupant mortality: A comparison between states with and without a formal system.

BACKGROUND: Population-based studies using a "before-and-after" methodology report a reduction in motor vehicle collision mortality with implementation of statewide trauma systems (TS). However, concurrent improvements in roads, cars, restraint systems, and changes in rates of drunk driving, socioeconomics, speed limits, urban or rural mix, and traffic density may also be responsible for the progressive reduction in mortality rates. We hypothesized that a statewide TS independently reduces injury mortality, irrespective of other factors. METHODS: Data were acquired from several federal agencies including the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the United States Department of Transportation (DOT), and the United States Census Bureau. Age-adjusted motor vehicle occupant (MVO) death rates per 100,000 population were compared in states with and without a TS. Negative binomial regression was used to calculate risk ratios (RR) comparing mortality in TS and non-TS states after adjusting for effects of gender, race, primary seat belt laws, seat belt use, alcohol use, miles traveled, population density, per capita income, types of registered vehicles, and rural or urban mix. RESULTS: : The number of states with a TS increased from 7 in 1981 to 36 in 2002. Concurrently, nationwide MVO death rates decreased by 2.6 per 100,000 (95% confidence interval 1.2-3.9; p < 0.001). Income, primary seat belt laws, restraint use, speed limits, and rural or urban population distribution (p < 0.05 for all), were independent predictors of MVO mortality, but not presence of a TS (RR 0.95, 95% confidence interval 0.73-1.23; p = 0.68). CONCLUSIONS: MVO death rates have declined over time, and are lower in TS states. However, the cause is multi-factorial, and cannot be attributed solely to presence of TS. Further studies are needed to identify beneficial components of a statewide trauma system.

Accidents, Traffic↗
PubMed1973

Prompting a consumer behavior for pollution control.

A field application of behavior modification studied the relative effectiveness of different prompting procedures for increasing the probability that customers entering a grocery store would select their soft drinks in returnable rather than nonreturnable containers. Six different 2-hr experimental conditions during which bottle purchases were recorded were (1) No Prompt (i.e., control), (2) one student gave incoming customers a handbill urging the purchase of soft drinks in returnable bottles, (3) distribution of the handbill by one student and public charting of each customer's bottle purchases by another student, (4) handbill distribution and charting by a five-member group, (5) handbills distributed and purchases charted by three females. The variant prompting techniques were equally effective, and in general increased the percentage of returnable-bottle customers by an average of 25%.

Journal Article↗
PubMed2002

Optimal indicators of socioeconomic status for health research.

OBJECTIVES: In this study we examined the relationship between indicators of socioeconomic status (SES) and mortality for a representative sample of individuals. METHODS: The sample included 3734 individuals aged 45 and older interviewed in 1984 in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. In the current study, mortality was tracked between 1984 and 1994 and is related to SES indicators of education, occupation, income, and wealth. RESULTS: Wealth and recent family income were the indicators that were most strongly associated with subsequent mortality. These associations persisted after we controlled for the other SES indicators and were stronger for women than for men and for non-elderly than for elderly individuals. CONCLUSIONS: We found that the economic indicators of SES were usually as strongly associated with mortality as, if not more strongly associated with mortality than, the more conventional indicators of completed schooling and occupation.

Age Factors↗
PubMed2000

Understanding income inequalities in health among men and women in Britain and Finland.

The aims of this study were to investigate whether the relationship between income and self-perceived health is similar for men and women in two contrasting welfare states, Britain and Finland; whether the relationship between income and health is accounted for by employment status, education, and occupational social class; and whether the association differs when using alternative ways of measuring income: gross individual and net household equivalent income. Among British and Finnish men, low household and low individual income were related to poor health, even after adjusting for employment status, education, and social class. The adjusted relationship between individual income and health was stronger for British than Finnish men. Among British and Finnish women, net household equivalent income was strongly related to health, but after adjusting for employment status, education, and social class this relationship became weaker for British women and practically disappeared for Finnish women. For British women the association between income and health differed strongly depending on the income measure used; gross individual income had almost no effect on health. These results indicate that the association between health and income has no threshold in the sense that only people in poverty have poorer health than others. In further studies of income and health, household equivalent income should be used as the principal measure of income with adjustments for employment status, and men and women should be studied separately.

Cross-Sectional Studies↗
PubMed2001

Dendritic cells, loaded with recombinant bacteria expressing tumor antigens, induce a protective tumor-specific response.

Dendritic cells (DCs) are considered the most potent antigen-presenting cells and probably the only ones able to prime naive T cells. Indeed, DCs are distributed in tissues that interface the external environment, where they act as sentinels for incoming bacteria, viruses, and fungi. We have previously analyzed the capacity of DCs to interact with bacteria, and we have shown that bacteria can act as "Trojan horses," delivering heterologous proteins to DCs in a processed form that allows extremely efficient loading of both MHC class I and class II molecules. In this study, we have optimized the usage of recombinant bacteria as an antigen delivery system for DCs, with the aim to develop a new DC vaccination strategy in antitumor immunity. We have focused on a low immunogenic antigen, the tyrosinase-related protein-2 (Trp-2), a self-antigen expressed in mouse and human melanoma for which induction of antitumor immunity has proven to be very ineffective. We have given mice injections of either Trp-2/recombinant bacteria-loaded DCs or with bacteria alone engineered to express the Trp-2 melanoma antigen. We have shown that only DCs loaded with recombinant bacteria, but not with wild-type bacteria, were able to induce Trp-2-specific CTLs and immunity against the B16 tumor. Immunity was obtained in experiments of tumor vaccination as well as in experiments of tumor therapy. When therapy with bacteria-loaded DCs was performed in B16 tumor-bearing mice, 60% of the treated mice were tumor free 2 months after the initial tumor growth.

Animals↗
PubMed2000

[Secular trends in intestinal parasitic diseases of childhood in the city of São Paulo, Brazil (1984-1996)].

OBJECTIVE: Data from two consecutive household surveys undertaken in mid-80s and mid-90s allow to characterize and analyse secular trends in infant and child intestinal parasitic diseases in the city of S. Paulo, Brazil. METHODS: The two surveys included random population samples aged from zero to 59 months (1,016 in the period of 1984-85 and 1,280 in 1995-96). Stool samples were collected in both surveys and examined by sedimentation techniques using both unstained and Lugol-stained preparations. For each survey, the study of the social distribution of the parasitic diseases took into account tertiles of the per capita family income. For the study of the determinants of secular trends, hierarchical causal models, multivariate regression analyses and calculations analogous to the ones used to assess population attributable risks were applied. RESULTS/CONCLUSIONS: In the time span from the first to the second survey, there was a substantial reduction in the prevalence of all parasites (from 30.9% to 10.7%), helminths in general (from 22.3% to 4.8%), giardiasis (from 14.5% to 5.5%) and two or more species of parasites (from 13.1% to 0.5%). A significant decline in prevalence was observed in all social strata and the inverse association between income and intestinal parasites was kept unchanged in the period. Positive changes in distal (family income and maternal schooling) and intermediate determinants (housing, sanitation, and access to health care) of helminthic disease could substantially explain part of its decline in the period. The decline in giardiasis was attributed to improvement in maternal schooling, housing and sanitation. The duplication in the attendance rate to day care nurseries may have restricted the decline rate in the giardiasis prevalence in the study period.

Brazil↗
PubMed2001

[Fiscal revenues derived from tobacco sales to young people in France].

This article examines the public revenues for France from tobacco sales to youths in 1997. The result is compared to the means of prevention the same year. Public revenues are estimated from: the number of adolescents divided into age groups (range: 12 to 19), the smoking rates by age group, the number of cigarettes smoked daily in each age group, the price of a cigarettes pack and the percentage of taxes. In 1997, almost 1.7 million youths were smokers and they smoked 240 million of cigarette boxes annually. This sale represented 4.7 billion of French Francs (FF): 3.615 billion of taxes, 380 million for tobacconists' and 762 million for the tobacco industry. The same year prevention represented less than FF 0.5 per year and inhabitant, one of the lowest ratios in developed countries.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2001

Gender, mosquitos and malaria: implications for community development programs in Laputta, Myanmar.

This paper examines the gender roles linked to division of labor and potential exposure to mosquitos and malaria prevention activities. A "Human Development Initiative" (HDI) Project has been launched in Laputta, a mangrove delta region of Myanmar assisted by United Nations Development Program since 1994. The project aims to improve rural community access to primary health care and provide micro-credit programs, income generation schemes, and educational opportunities as a basis for community empowerment. Women and children of low-income households are the target beneficiaries. Prior to self-care training program and distribution of self-care manuals, altogether 20 focus group discussions (separately assigned to men and women) were conducted in eight study villages between January to February 2000. The primary vector for malaria in study area is Anopheles sundaicus. Rural women were prone to malaria due to exposure to mosquitos within the peak biting period at night because of their gender assigned roles. Both men and women perceived that mosquitos commonly bite before midnight, more at dusk. Lack of awareness of correlation between mosquitos and malaria together with lack of affordability enhance either non-use or shared use of bed-nets at home. Rural women did not consider destruction of breeding places of mosquitos as their major concern. Thus, it is essential for program planners to motivate local women for more active participation in vector control measures within and beyond their households in the context of community development programs.

Animals↗
PubMed1990

Urbanization and low-income housing in Malaysia: impact on the urban Malays.

The focus of this study is on urbanization in Malaysia. "This paper is divided into three parts. The first part examines the trend of uneven urban development in West Malaysia. The second part discusses the change [in] ethnic composition of urban population between 1970 and 1980 intercensal period. The third part analyses the impact of the urbanization process on the Malays in the context of housing problems of the lower income groups." (SUMMARY IN THA)

Asia↗
PubMed2005

[The association between income, education, lifestyle and psychosocial stressor and obesity in elderly].

The authors collected data with Countrywide Integrated Noncommunicable Diseases Intervention Programme (CINDI Programme) questionnaire, in Lódź an industrial city of Poland. One of the purposes of CINDI Programme was to evaluate the impact of socioeconomic status, lifestyle and stress on health status in elderly. Obesity is a very important risk factor for cardiovascular disease (CVD), some pulmonary, neoplasmatic and motoric system diseases. The main purpose of this paper was to examine the effect of income, education, lifestyle and stress on BMI (body mass index) and WHR (waist/hip ratio) in older population of Lódź (age 65 + years). The study was conducted according to WHO standards set for CINDI Programme. The surveys were directed at random samples and sent to 1461 men and women age 65. An overall response rate was 57.1%. We have found that lower educational level and low physical activity are the predictors of obesity in our population. We have observed an inverse correlation between smoking and BMI and WHR. Stress associated with the feeling of not being able to fulfil the demands of everyday life was a strong predictor of obesity in woman. Income, family status and food habits were not associated with obesity in elderly. As we gain new knowledge about older population, we may be able to more accurately and effectively target preventive services and help older adults make health decisions to reduce diseases' risk factors and increase their quality of life.

Aged↗
PubMedDate not supplied

[Changes in factors associated with the nutrition transition in Mexico].

OBJECTIVES: To describe the demographic and socioeconomic changes, food availability and food expense in Mexico during 1980-2000. METHODS: From official statistics (Population Census, FAO Food Balance Sheets, Family Income and Expense National Survey and Economic Census) we estimated the evolution of population distribution according to locality size, occupational structure, woman participation in the wage-earning labor force, minimum wage, availability of food establishments and expense in food. RESULTS: The percentage of the population that lives in urban areas has increased, they are employed in the tertiary sector, womens participation in the labor market has increased but real minimum wages have decreased. Vegetables, oleaginous, oils, fish and seafood availability have decreased whereas animal fat, vegetables, fruits, softdrinks, meats and egg availability have increased. The number of inexpensive restaurants (cocinas económicas and fondas) has also increased. Food expenses have decreased while amount of money spent in food consumed away from home has increased. CONCLUSIONS: In Mexico, the growth in urban areas and the tertiary job sector shows a parallel growth in the availability of high fat and protein food, a greater diet variety and more opportunities to consume food not prepared in the home. On the other hand, the sale of equipment and places designed for recreational physical activity have increased. By reducing employment in the primary sector it is foreseeable that labor intensive physical activity will become less important overtime.

Female↗
PubMed1997

Demographic profile of health-care coverage in America in 1993.

This study examined the distribution of health-care insurance coverage by race/ethnicity using data on gender, age, income, and education to identify segments of the population with and without health-care insurance in 1993. Among all groups, whites were more likely to have health-care insurance coverage than blacks or Hispanics. The data also were cross-classified by type of insurance coverage, including private, Medicare, and Medicaid. Whites were more likely than minorities to have private coverage, whereas minorities, socially disadvantaged persons in all groups, and the elderly were more likely to be covered by Medicare and Medicaid.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1990

Lack of difference in neonatal mortality between blacks and whites served by the same medical care system.

To study the influence of health care systems on racial differences in low birthweight and neonatal mortality, an historical cohort analysis was conducted using birth and linked birth and death certificates of infants delivered in Pierce County, Washington, between 1982 and 1985. Overall, black infants had significantly higher rates of low birthweight than white infants. Black infants served by civilian medical care had approximately twice the neonatal mortality of white infants; however, black infants born in the military hospital had a neonatal mortality rate comparable to white infants. Controlling for marital status, age, parity, and income status did not appreciably change these patterns. Military care appeared to be associated with a protective effect for neonatal mortality for blacks. This effect was not due to differences in birthweight distribution or to the quantity of prenatal care received. The effect was most prominent for normal weight black infants, especially for those from low-income census tracts. The findings have possible implications for pediatric access issues for the poor and for the family practice model of perinatal care continuity.

Black or African American↗