Introduction During all phases of the disaster management cycle, PH surveillance plays a valuable role. Surveillance provides PH officials and stakeholders the information they need to respond to disasters and take action in an appropriate and timely manner. Despite the fact that surveillance provides a valuable function in disasters, a study by the Disaster Epidemiology Subcommittee of the Cou...

Cultural constructs prevalent in older African Americans may influence their risk perceptions and knowledge of Alzheimer disease (AD). To examine this issue, we administered 3 sociocultural scales, the AD Knowledge Scale, and a Risk Perception questionnaire to 271 older African Americans who were recruited from a large community senior center and local churches. Higher Present Time Orientation ...

At 16 senior centers, we studied the effectiveness of exercise and cognitive-behavioral programs, compared with a discussion control program, in reducing falls and injuries among 230 older adults. After 1 year of the programs, we observed no significant difference in time to first fall. Even though a relatively high percentage (38.6%) suffered at least one fall, only 7.8% of these community-res...

PURPOSE The purpose of our study was to determine the relationship between perceived neck disability and active cervical range of motion (ROM). METHODS Twenty-three senior center attendees aged 60 to 90 participated. Their ROM was measured using the cervical range of motion instrument (CROM). Perceived neck disability was characterized using the Neck Disability Index (NDI). Pearson correlatio...

1CDC/CSTE Applied Epidemiology Fellowship Program, Atlanta, GA, USA; 2Acute Disease Epidemiology Section, Georgia Department of Public Health, Atlanta, GA, USA; 3Syndromic Surveillance Project, Georgia Department of Public Health, Atlanta, GA, USA; 4Health Information Systems Section, Georgia Department of Public Health, Atlanta, GA, USA; 5Epidemiology Section, Georgia Department of Public Heal...

BACKGROUND Frailty is a multidimensional clinical geriatric syndrome that may be reversed in its early stages. Most studies have paid attention to its physical or phenotypic boundaries, however, little is known about the social aspects surrounding this geriatric syndrome. The study examined the relationship between socio-demographic factors, social resources, quality of life and frailty in olde...

PURPOSE OF THE STUDY To explore the experience of older adults in their neighborhood in relation to perceived fall risk, fear of falling (FOF), and resources/strategies for fall prevention. DESIGN AND METHODS Fourteen older adults, 65 years of age and older from 3 urban senior centers, participated in this qualitative study. The semistructured interview guidelines and background questionnaire...

BACKGROUND Despite a body of evidence on racial/ethnic minority enrollment and retention in research, literature specifically focused on recruiting racially/ethnically diverse older adults for social science studies is limited. There is a need for more rigorous research on methodological issues and the efficacy of recruitment methods. Cultural obstacles to recruitment of racial/ethnic minority ...

health care systems should assign quality improvement as their main mission. clinical governance (cg) is a key strategy to improve quality of health care services. the iranian ministry of health and medical education (mohme) has promoted cg as a framework for safeguarding quality and safety in all hospitals since 2009. the purpose of this study was to explore perceived facilitators and barriers...