ii iii NOTICE TO BORROWERS All dissertations deposited in the Georgia State University Library must be used in accordance with the stipulations prescribed by the author in the preceding statement. Users of this dissertation not regularly enrolled as students at Georgia State University are required to attest acceptance of the preceding stipulations by signing below. Libraries borrowing this dis...

Hypertension and stroke are important threats to the health of adults in sub-Saharan Africa. Nevertheless, detection of hypertension is haphazard and stroke prevention targets are currently unattainable. Prevalence, detection, management, and control of hypertension were assessed in 1013 men (n=385) and women (n=628), both aged 55 [SD 11] years, living in 12 villages in Ashanti, Ghana. Five hun...

OBJECTIVE To determine the factors associated with excessive body fat among black African men and women living in rural and urban communities of South Africa. METHODS This is a cross-sectional analysis of data from the Prospective Urban and Rural Epidemiology (PURE) study, Cape Town, South Africa conducted in 2009/2010. The study sample included 1220 participants (77.2% women) aged 35-70 year...

BACKGROUND The low uptake of facility-based HIV counseling and testing (HCT) in South Africa, particularly amongst men and youth has hindered attempts to increase access to effective treatment and prevention strategies. Many barriers to HIV testing have been described including long waiting times, transport to reach facilities, fear of lack of confidentiality and health systems factors such as ...

BACKGROUND Hypertension is becoming increasingly important in sub-Saharan Africa. However, evidences in support of this trend with time are still not available. The aim of this study was to evaluate the 10-year change in blood pressure levels and prevalence of hypertension in rural and urban Cameroon. METHODS Two cross-sectional population-based surveys in Yaounde (urban area) and Evodoula (r...

BACKGROUND Previous studies have reported that older people's social participation has positive effects on their health. However, some studies showed that the impacts of social participation on health differ by gender. We sought to examine whether the effects of social participation on mental health differ for men and women in a Japanese population. We also examined the moderating influence of ...

OBJECTIVE To investigate how weight cycling (gaining and losing weight) affects the risk of diabetes. DESIGN Cohort studies. SETTING Primary healthcare in urban and rural Japan. PARTICIPANTS 20 708 urban and 9670 rural residents. PRIMARY OUTCOME MEASURES ORs for diabetes in those with weight loss, weight loss-gain, stable weight, weight gain-loss and weight gain over 10 years. Weight ga...

OBJECTIVE This study considers whether rural status or living in a particular region of the United States has effects on mental and physical health. The analyses examine whether there are independent and interactive effects of rural status and region of residence on health, beyond individual level factors related to poverty. METHODS Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression models are used to e...

the findings revealed that about 31 percent of women were below and 69% were above the food poverty line. comparison of averages of some variables including education status, employment (head of household), income, banking facilities such as credit and loans, property and assets, savings, economic skills, economic participation, government supports, husband's attitude, self-confidence, self-est...