All societies face the need to make judgments about what interventions (both public health and personal medical) to provide to their populations under reasonable resource constraints. Their decisions should be informed by good evidence and arguments from health technology assessment (HTA). But if HTA restricts itself to evaluations of safety, efficacy, and cost-effectiveness, it risks being vie...

Maternal depression was recently conceptualized as a network of interacting symptoms. Prior studies have shown that low self-efficacy, as an index of maternal functioning, is one important source of stress that worsens depression. We have limited information, however, on the specific relationships between depression symptoms and self-efficacy. In this study, we used regularized partial correlat...

Generic drugs should be interchangeable with originators in terms of quality and efficacy. With relative lower prices, generic drugs are playing an important role in controlling health expenditures and ensuring access. However, the widespread understanding of "cheap price equals low quality" has a negative impact on the acceptance of generic drugs. In China, medical doctors doubt the efficacy a...

OBJECTIVES We assessed the feasibility of delivering the Otago Exercise Programme (OEP) via an interactive DVD (ie, OEP-DVD) in combination with monthly physical therapist phone calls to older adults. DESIGN This pre-post (baseline and 6-month follow-up) study included an intervention group (n=61) based in a rural location and a control group (n=21) based in a city. SETTING Sechelt and Vanc...

HIV-infected patients are at increased risk for both vaccine-preventable diseases and their complications, with mortality rates higher than in non-HIV-infected individuals. Consequently, international guidelines generally recommend inactivated vaccines in HIV-patients, even if HIV-related immunodeficiency may impair efficacy; live vaccines are usually not recommended in these patients because o...

BACKGROUND Recent data have called into question the reliability and predictive validity of standard admission procedures to medical schools. Eliciting non-cognitive attributes of medical school applicants using qualitative tools and methods has thus become a major challenge. METHODS 299 applicants aged 18-25 formed the research group. A set of six research tools was developed in addition to ...

Husband's/partner's support for family planning may influence a women's modern contraceptive use. Socio-demographic factors, couple communication about family planning, and fertility preferences are known to play a role in contraceptive use. We conducted logistic regression analysis to investigate the relationship between perceived husband's/partner's approval and husband's/partner's encouragem...

background: although sleeping problems are common among all age groups, the elderly suffer a higher prevalence of sleep disorders. the present study aimed to investigate the relationship between sleep quality, self-efficacy, and stages of change among the elderly. methods: this descriptive-analytical study was conducted on 36 individuals aged 60-75 years selected through simple random sampling ...

it is well documented that language learning success or failure is influenced by the affective side of the learner. self-efficacy and anxiety are among the affective factors influencing language learning. this study first explores the relationship between efl learners' self-efficacy in reading comprehension and their reading anxiety. secondly, it explores the relationship between efl learners' ...

objectives: chronic diseases such as diabetes mellitus have negative effects on physical and mental health. depression is the most common psychological problems in this group of patients. the purpose of this study was to predict depression symptoms based on self-efficacy and social support. materials and methods: a total of 130 patients with diabetes recruited from several clinics in shiraz. th...