Health impact assessment (HIA) on a strategic level focuses on the broad determinants of health. However, the evidence with regard to the health impacts is often necessarily 'soft'. The example of a health impact review on national housing policy in the Netherlands shows that HIA can be effective even in the absence of hard data. Strategies used to overcome the problem of not having hard data a...

OBJECTIVES We examined how different types of health information-seeking behaviors (HISBs)-no use, illness information only, wellness information only, and illness and wellness information combined-are associated with health risk factors and health indicators to determine possible motives for health information seeking. METHODS A sample of 559 Seattle-Tacoma area adults completed an Internet-...

Background Many countries conduct Health Impact Assessment (HIA) of their projects and policies to predict their positive and negative health impacts. In recent years many guides have been developed to inform HIA practice, largely reflecting local developments in HIA. These guides have often been designed for specific contexts and specific need, making the choice between guides difficult. The o...

The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), Regional Office of the World Health Organization (WHO) for the Americas, has tried to promote health technology assessment (HTA) in Latin America for 25 years. A certain awareness of HTA developed in several countries because of these efforts. In the late 1990's, there was a strong movement for health reform in Latin America, and HTA became part of t...

BACKGROUND Modelling studies are used widely to help inform decisions about health care and policy and their use is increasing. However, in order for modelling to gain strength as a tool for health policy, it is critical that key model factors are transparent so that users of models can have a clear understanding of the model and its limitations.Reporting guidelines are evidence-based tools tha...

In this paper, we test the hypothesis that health technology assessment units located in hospitals tend to be more optimistic toward technologies that are currently in use in their organization than technologies that are not. The data include 108 health technologies assessed in 87 full-scale health technology assessment reports produced by the four main local health technology assessment units ...

background: this study assessed the relationship between working memory capacity and auditory stream segregation by using the concurrent minimum audible angle in children with a diagnosed auditory processing disorder (apd). methods: the participants in this cross-sectional, comparative study were 20 typically developing children and 15 children with a diagnosed apd (age, 9–11 years) according t...

assiganga stream is an important tributary of bhagirathi river in central himalaya (india). the stream is characterized by heterogeneity in habitat and substratum features harboring diverse fish fauna. at present this stream is facing threat of being fragmented by the construction of two hydro-electric projects. present study aimed to study fish diversity and their habitat use in assiganga stre...

Methods We examined data from the 2010 health risk assessment (HRA) among Vanderbilt University employees who are enrolled in the employer insurance plan. The HRA is a 39item online questionnaire developed by Wellsource, Inc. In 2010, 80% of eligible employees completed the HRA (n=16,976). We analyzed characteristics of PIA among employees, defined as individuals who reported exercising less th...

BACKGROUND Primary prevention programs at the worksite can improve employee health and reduce the burden of cardiovascular disease. Programs that include a web-based health risk assessment (HRA) with tailored feedback hold the advantage of simultaneously increasing awareness of risk and enhancing initiation of health-behaviour change. In this study we evaluated initial health-behaviour change a...