In the United States, heroin use is increasing and was implicated in 3805 deaths in 1993 (1). Multnomah County is Oregon's most populous county (1998 estimated population: 641,900); three fourths of county residents live in Portland. In 1999, in response to community concerns, the Multnomah County Health Department analyzed medical examiner (ME) data for 1993-1999 and interviewed heroin users t...

STUDY OBJECTIVES To determine the validity of physical and mental unhealthy days as summary measures for county health status and to forward a method for examining county level health trends using a single year of data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS). DESIGN The study analysed geographical variation in physical and mental unhealthy days at the state and county leve...

This study investigates the usage of road networks both within and outside of home jurisdictions (city (or town) and county of residence) by analyzing GPS data collected in the Minneapolis Saint Paul metropolitan area, which tracked volunteers’ travel behavior to determine which roads (and thus which class of roads) users chose to accommodate their travel needs. More than half of the travel on ...

Study objectives: To determine the validity of physical and mental unhealthy days as summary measures for county health status and to forward a method for examining county level health trends using a single year of data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS). Design: The study analysed geographical variation in physical and mental unhealthy days at the state and county leve...

OBJECTIVE Los Angeles County has the largest population of any county in the nation. Population-based estimates of health conditions for Los Angeles County are based primarily on telephone surveys, which are known to underestimate conditions of public health importance. This report presents the prevalence of selected health conditions for civilian noninstitutionalized adults aged 20 and over li...

OBJECTIVE This study aimed to investigate prescription patterns and influencing factors in Chinese county hospitals. METHODS Prescription quality was evaluated by five indicators proposed by WHO/INRUD. A questionnaire for doctors was designed by our research group. All internists, surgeons, obstetricians, gynecologists and pediatricians from 10 county hospitals in Anhui province were asked to...

OBJECTIVE To assess the effectiveness of a clinic-based pediatric literacy intervention on a multilingual population. BACKGROUND Clinic-based literacy interventions are effective among English- and Spanish-speaking children. No data exist for multilingual populations. SETTING Pediatric clinic in an urban county hospital. Design/Methods. Reading practices of 2 cross-sectional groups were ass...

This paper describes and evaluates the budgeting and planning processes in public hospitals in Kenya. We used a qualitative case study approach to examine these processes in two hospitals in Kenya. We collected data by in-depth interviews of national level policy makers, hospital managers, and frontline practitioners in the case study hospitals (n = 72), a review of documents, and non-participa...