Population exposure to multiple chemicals in air presents significant challenges for environmental public health. Air quality regulations distinguish criteria air pollutants (CAPs) (e.g., ozone, PM2.5) from hazardous air pollutants (HAPs)-187 chemicals which include carcinogens and others that are associated with respiratory, cardiovascular, neurological and numerous other non-cancer health eff...

Background The relationship between physical activity and muscular strength has not been examined in detail among older adults. The objective of this study was to examine the associations between physical activity and hand grip strength among adults aged ≥ 60 years. Methods Using data from the UK Biobank study, we included 66 582 men and women with complete baseline data and 6599 with 4.5 yea...

Administrative databases in the Canadian health sector do not contain socio-economic information. To facilitate the monitoring of social inequalities for health planning, this study proposes a material and social deprivation index for Canada. After explaining the concept of deprivation, we describe the methodological aspects of the index and apply it to the example of premature mortality (i.e. ...

AIMS To study the relation between risk of cerebral palsy and socioeconomic status. METHODS A total of 293 children with a diagnosis of cerebral palsy out of 105,760 live births between 1 January 1982 and 31 December 1997 were identified from the special conditions sub-file of the West Sussex Computerised Child Health System. RESULTS There was a linear association between risk of cerebral p...

Epidemiological data on snoring from preschool children are scarce, although habitual snoring (snoring on almost all nights) has been associated with poor long-term outcomes. In a population survey of 6,811 children aged 1-4 yrs (from Leicestershire, UK) the present authors determined prevalence, severity and risk factors for snoring, especially habitual snoring. In 59.7% of the children, paren...

OBJECTIVE To compare the Jarman index with alternative deprivation measures with regard to its usefulness to district health authorities as an indicator of need at small area level. DESIGN The Jarman index (UPA (8)), Townsend's index of material deprivation, the Scottish Development Department's index, the Department of the Environment's basic index, and unemployment rates were compared in re...

Deprivation indices are useful measures to study health inequalities. Different techniques are commonly applied to construct deprivation indices, including multi-criteria decision methods such as the analytical hierarchy process (AHP). The multi-criteria deprivation index for the city of Quito is an index in which indicators are weighted by applying the AHP. In this research, a variation of thi...

STUDY OBJECTIVE To describe the advantages of using Poisson regression methods as an alternative to standardisation when computing expected numbers of disease occurrences adjusted for possible confounding factors. The problem of assessing the adequacy of model fit when the expectations are small is addressed by analytical calculations and by simulation. The method is illustrated with data from ...

BACKGROUND Serological studies indicate that evidence of coeliac disease (CD) exists in about 1% of all children, but we lack estimates of current diagnostic patterns among children and how they vary by socioeconomic group. METHODS We identified all children aged 0-18 years between 1993 and 2012 who were registered with general practices across the UK that contribute to a large population-bas...

OBJECTIVE To explore the role of behavioral and psychosocial factors in explaining the social gradient in self-rated health as defined either by an individual or a neighborhood deprivation index. STUDY DESIGN AND SETTING Data were from the baseline survey of the UK Flexible Sigmoidoscopy trial. Recruitment through general practices was stratified to generate a socioeconomically diverse sample...