Towards a comprehensive public health response to population ageing.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Beard JR
PROVIDER: S-EPMC4663973 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Feb
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Publications
Towards a comprehensive public health response to population ageing.
Beard John R JR Bloom David E DE
Lancet (London, England) 20141106 9968
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Project description:BackgroundFor public health policies to be effective, it is critical that they are acceptable to the public as acceptance levels impact success rate.ObjectiveTo explore public acceptance of public health statements and examine differences in acceptability across socio-demographics, health behaviours (physical activity, diet, binge drinking and smoking), health status and well-being.MethodA cross-sectional survey was conducted with a nationally representative sample (N = 1001) using a random stratified sampling method. Face-to-face interviews were conducted at homes of residents in Wales aged 16+ years. Individuals reported whether they agreed, had no opinion, or disagreed with 12 public health statements.ResultsMore than half of the sample were supportive of 10 out of 12 statements. The three statements with the greatest support (>80% agreement) reflected the importance of: a safe and loving childhood to becoming a healthy adult, schools teaching about health, and healthier foods costing less. Individuals who engaged in unhealthy behaviours were less likely to agree with some of the statements (eg 39.8% of binge drinkers agreed alcohol adverts should be banned compared to 57.6% of those who never binge drink; P < .001).ConclusionsFindings show an appetite for public health policies among the majority of the public. The relationship between supporting policies and engaging in healthy behaviours suggests a feedback loop that is potentially capable of shifting both public opinion and the opportunities for policy intervention. If a nation becomes healthier, this could illicit greater support for stronger policies which could encourage more people to move in a healthier direction.
| S-EPMC7495082 | biostudies-literature
Project description:This paper introduces the 'Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe' (SHARE) to researchers on ageing. SHARE provides an infrastructure to help researchers better understand the individual and population ageing process: where we are, where we are heading to, and how we can influence the quality of life as we age, both as individuals and as societies. The baseline wave in 2004 provides data on the life circumstances of some 27,000 persons aged 50 and over in 11 European countries, ranging from Scandinavia across Western and Central Europe to the Mediterranean. SHARE has made great efforts to deliver truly comparable data, so we can reliably study how differences in cultures, living conditions and policy approaches shape the life of Europeans just before and after retirement. The paper first describes the SHARE data. In order to demonstrate its value, it then presents highlights from the three main research areas covered by SHARE, namely economics, sociology, and health.
| S-EPMC5546288 | biostudies-other
Project description:Public health seeks to improve health at a population level through interventions that increase the net health benefit to the population as a whole. Advances in genomics knowledge and technologies can add to this endeavor, but also pose a challenge when faced with often conflicting public health (population) and genomic medicine (individual) perspectives. Combining the fields of genomic, population, and social sciences, population genomics or public health genomics looks at the promotion of health and prevention of disease using genomic knowledge through the lens of populations rather than individuals. In this chapter we will survey the three major disciplines contributing to population genomics (genomics, population, and social sciences) and explore two cross-cutting issues: global health and population versus individual health, using specific examples from diseases such as asthma, colon cancer, and cystic fibrosis.
| S-EPMC7149728 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Wastewater is a geospatially- and temporally-linked microbial fingerprint of a given population, making it a potentially valuable tool for tracking public health across locales and time. Here, we integrate targeted and bulk RNA sequencing (N = 2238 samples) to track the viral, bacterial, and functional content over geospatially distinct areas within Miami Dade County, USA, from 2020-2022. We used targeted amplicon sequencing to track diverse SARS-CoV-2 variants across space and time, and we found a tight correspondence with positive PCR tests from University students and Miami-Dade hospital patients. Additionally, in bulk metatranscriptomic data, we demonstrate that the bacterial content of different wastewater sampling locations serving small population sizes can be used to detect putative, host-derived microorganisms that themselves have known associations with human health and diet. We also detect multiple enteric pathogens (e.g., Norovirus) and characterize viral diversity across sites. Moreover, we observed an enrichment of antimicrobial resistance genes (ARGs) in hospital wastewater; antibiotic-specific ARGs correlated to total prescriptions of those same antibiotics (e.g Ampicillin, Gentamicin). Overall, this effort lays the groundwork for systematic characterization of wastewater that can potentially influence public health decision-making.
| S-EPMC11436780 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Current measures for monitoring progress towards universal health coverage (UHC) do not adequately account for populations that do not have the same level of access to quality care services and/or financial protection to cover health expenses for when care is accessed. This gap in accounting for unmet health care needs may contribute to underutilization of needed services or widening inequalities. Asking people whether or not their needs for health care have been met, as part of a household survey, is a pragmatic way of capturing this information. This analysis examined responses to self-reported questions about unmet need asked as part of 17 health, social and economic surveys conducted between 2001 and 2019, representing 83 low-, middle- and high-income countries. Noting the large variation in questions and response categories, the results point to low levels (less than 2%) of unmet need reported in adults aged 60+ years in countries like Andorra, Qatar, Republic of Korea, Slovenia, Thailand and Viet Nam to rates of over 50% in Georgia, Haiti, Morocco, Rwanda, and Zimbabwe. While unique, these estimates are likely underestimates, and do not begin to address issues of poor quality of care as a barrier or contributing to unmet need in those who were able to access care. Monitoring progress towards UHC will need to incorporate estimates of unmet need if we are to reach universality and reduce health inequalities in older populations.
| S-EPMC10503154 | biostudies-literature
Project description:SARS CoV-2 WGS (Georgia Department of Public Health)
| PRJNA713775 | ENA
Project description:Bancha is a popular type of green tea in Japan, rich in tea polyphenols (TPs) and has a more astringent aroma with a less aromatic and strong character that complements functional foods. The blanching process is used to extract TPs and remove unwanted microorganisms, as well as inhibit phenolic oxidation. This study proposed a green tea blanching process followed by spray drying the extracts with maltodextrin. Furthermore, it is focused on maximizing the major chemical components of green tea (i.e., catechins, caffeine, and phenolic contents) based on powder particle size obtained through Multiple Response Surface Methodology optimizations. The results show that the proposed model accurately predicts leached-spray dried green tea's total catechin and caffeine content, with a coefficient of 0.9475 and 0.8692, respectively. This process yielded composite desirability of 0.9751, while individual desirability yielded excellent results of 1.0000, 0.9188, 1.0000, and 0.9839 for catechin, caffeine, phenol content, and powder. The settings appear to yield functional results for entire responses. Due to the concerns in tropical skin nutrition applications, smaller particle size green tea can promote better adsorption than larger sizes.
| S-EPMC9734194 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundPrevious research suggests that the social network may play very different roles in relation to health in countries with differing welfare regimes.ObjectiveThe study aimed to assess the interplay between social network, socioeconomic position, and self-rated health (SRH) in European countries.MethodsThe study used cross-sectional data on individuals aged 50+ from the fourth wave of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) and includes data from 16 countries. The outcome is poor SRH. All analyses are adjusted for age and stratified by gender.ResultsLow satisfaction with the social network was associated with poor SRH among women in all country groups, but predicted poor SRH among males in West/Central and Eastern Europe only. The results from the multivariable analysis showed an increased likelihood of poor SRH among those with relatively lower education, as well as among those with low satisfaction with the social network (women from all country groups and men from Western/Central and Eastern Europe). However, the results from interaction analysis show that poor SRH for those with lower relative position in educational level was greater among those with higher satisfaction with the social network among male and female participants from Northern Europe. The health of individuals who are highly satisfied with their social network is more associated with socioeconomic status in Northern Europe.ConclusionsThis study highlights the significance of social network and socioeconomic gradients in health among the elderly in Europe.
| S-EPMC5912441 | biostudies-literature
Project description: Not available
| S-EPMC1200573 | biostudies-literature
Project description:While genomic approaches to precision medicine hold great promise, they remain prohibitively expensive for developing countries. The precision public health paradigm, whereby healthcare decisions are made at the level of populations as opposed to individuals, provides one way for the genomics revolution to directly impact health outcomes in the developing world. Genomic approaches to precision public health require a deep understanding of local population genomics, which is still missing for many developing countries. We are investigating the population genomics of genetic variants that mediate drug response in an effort to inform healthcare decisions in Colombia. Our work focuses on two neighboring populations with distinct ancestry profiles: Antioquia and Chocó. Antioquia has primarily European genetic ancestry followed by Native American and African components, whereas Chocó shows mainly African ancestry with lower levels of Native American and European admixture. We performed a survey of the global distribution of pharmacogenomic variants followed by a more focused study of pharmacogenomic allele frequency differences between the two Colombian populations. Worldwide, we found pharmacogenomic variants to have both unusually high minor allele frequencies and high levels of population differentiation. A number of these pharmacogenomic variants also show anomalous effect allele frequencies within and between the two Colombian populations, and these differences were found to be associated with their distinct genetic ancestry profiles. For example, the C allele of the single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rs4149056 [Solute Carrier Organic Anion Transporter Family Member 1B1 (SLCO1B1)∗5], which is associated with an increased risk of toxicity to a commonly prescribed statin, is found at relatively high frequency in Antioquia and is associated with European ancestry. In addition to pharmacogenomic alleles related to increased toxicity risk, we also have evidence that alleles related to dosage and metabolism have large frequency differences between the two populations, which are associated with their specific ancestries. Using these findings, we have developed and validated an inexpensive allele-specific PCR assay to test for the presence of such population-enriched pharmacogenomic SNPs in Colombia. These results serve as an example of how population-centered approaches to pharmacogenomics can help to realize the promise of precision medicine in resource-limited settings.
| S-EPMC6439339 | biostudies-literature