In 2014, 81% of new human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection diagnoses in the United States were in males, with the highest number of cases among those aged 20-29 years. Racial and ethnic minorities continue to be disproportionately affected by HIV; there are 13 new diagnoses each year per 100,000 white males, 94 per 100,000 black males, and 42 per 100,000 Hispanic males (1). Despite the re...

INTRODUCTION Low-carbohydrate diets (LCDs) have regained popularity in recent years, but public awareness and perceived healthfulness of LCDs have not been explored. We describe population awareness, use, and perceptions of the healthfulness of LCDs and examine differences by sociodemographic and communication variables. METHODS Nationally representative data from the Health Information Natio...

OBJECTIVE Weight self-perceptions, or how a person perceives his/her weight status, may affect weight outcomes. We use nationally representative data from 1988-1994 and 1999-2008 to examine racial/ethnic disparities in weight self-perceptions and understand how disparities have changed over time. DESIGN Using data from two time periods, 1988-1994 and 1999-2008, we calculated descriptive stati...

BACKGROUND In recent decades the overall smoking prevalence in the US has fallen steadily. This study examines whether the same trend is seen in the Medicaid population. METHODS AND FINDINGS National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) data from 17 consecutive annual surveys from 1997 to 2013 (combined N = 514,043) were used to compare smoking trends for 4 insurance groups: Medicaid, the Uninsured...

OBJECTIVE Whether the increase in prescription medication use over time differs by age and obesity status is unclear. METHOD National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) between 1988 and 2012 was analyzed (n = 57,543). FINDINGS Increased medication use over time was seen in older individuals of all body mass index (BMI) classes, with the most prominent increase in those with ob...

We examine the education gradient in diabetes, hypertension, and high cholesterol. We take into account diagnosed as well as undiagnosed cases, and use methods accounting for the possibility of unmeasured factors that are correlated with education and drive both the likelihood of having illness and the propensity to be diagnosed. Data come from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surv...

Nearly 40 million persons in the United States have a disability, as defined by responses to six questions recommended by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as the national standard for identifying disabilities in population-based health surveys (1). Although these questions have been used to estimate prevalence of functional disabilities overall, as well as types of functional di...

BACKGROUND Little is known about the prevalence of dietary supplement (DS) use in American adolescents. We conducted this study to analyze the prevalence of DS use and factors associated with this use in a national population-based sample. METHODS We used data from the 1999 - 2002 National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (NHANES) for adolescents age 11 to 19. Using weighted logistic ...

The present data article describes high-school drop-out related web activities in Canada, from 2004 to 2012, obtained mining Google Trends (GT), using high-school drop-out as key-word. The searches volumes were processed, correlated and cross-correlated with statistical data obtained at national and province level and broken down for gender. Further, an autoregressive moving-average (ARMA) mode...

BACKGROUND Latent tuberculosis infection (LTBI) prevalence in the United States decreased approximately 60% in the three decades between the 1971-1972 and 1999-2000 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) surveys. We examined the effects of birth cohort on LTBI prevalence over time. METHODS Using weighted data analysis software to account for NHANES survey design, we calcula...