Community Health Equity Research & Policy

This study designed and piloted an interactive measure to assess learning preferences of Latinos in the United States with diabetes and limited literacy. The measure utilized interactive learning activities to represent four learning styles: visual (seeing), kinesthetic (doing), affective (feeling/sensing), and cognitive (thinking), targeting four diabetes self-management behaviors: choosing healthy foods; understanding portion sizes; distinguishing foods to eat often/sometimes/rarely; and limiting fat. Quantitative data were collected using the Spanish Short Test of Functional Health Literacy in Adults (S-TOFHLA). Individual, structured cognitive interview questions asked participants to identify learning activities that most reflected their own experience with diabetes. Participant observations provided additional qualitative data. Ten Spanish-speaking adults with type 2 diabetes and limited literacy participated in two randomly selected target behaviors and identified easiest and most difficult to understand learning activities. S-TOFHLA scores ranged from 0 to 21 points (mean 7.0) and identified eight participants with inadequate and two with marginal health literacy. Easiest to understand tasks were kinesthetic, most difficult to understand tasks were cognitive. This is one of the first known studies of its kind and offers insight for measuring learning styles of Latinos with diabetes and low health literacy.

This descriptive cross sectional study was conducted to determine attitudes to and the prevalence of intimate partner violence (IPV) among women of reproductive age in a migrant community in southwest Nigeria. All consenting females aged 15–49 years in the area sampled were interviewed. A structured questionnaire administered in the local language was used to obtain information on attitudes toward IPV in seven hypothetical situations as well as their exposure to IPV. Eighty-seven percent of women had ever experienced IPV, while 20% experienced IPV in the preceding 12 months. Regarding attitudes to IPV, 79.5% of women believed that wife beating was justified in at least one of seven situations. Respondents who were not living with a male partner were more likely than their counterparts who were married/cohabiting to accept IPV (p = 0.03). There is a need for a cultural reorientation through appropriate health education interventions.

This study attempted to find out whether parents in Bangladesh considered it important to provide reproductive and sexual health education to their adolescent children. It investigated possibilities of making parents play effective role models in educating their children on reproductive and sexual health. Findings suggest considerable positive attitude of parents toward adolescent reproductive health education, including a positive environment for introducing reproductive and sexual health education in schools. Nevertheless, findings also revealed a serious lack of knowledge among parents on basic understanding of reproductive and sexual health matters. Some parents also had reservations about educating their children on these matters. Making parents more aware of reproductive and sexual health matters and developing their communication skill to talk to their children along with in-school education for adolescents should be given high priority in Bangladesh.

Arrack, indigenously made and known as tari, is a widely-used alcoholic beverage among poor drinkers in rural Bangladesh. This study examines the influences of men's arrack drinking habits on violence against women at the family level in Parbattipur, a typical village of northwest Bangladesh. Fifty purposively-selected married male arrack drinkers as well as their wives were interviewed singly by using a semi-structured questionnaire. Results show that arrack drinkers suffer from behavioral abnormalities. It creates family problems and women are often victimized by their husbands' drunken behaviors. Although violence against women is a common phenomenon in rural Bangladesh, it is argued that men's habitual arrack drinking behaviors, through the interplay of a patriarchal family structure, are directly linked with incidences of violence against women within marriage.

Large-scale surveys in Europe document that some 8–15% of European workers are subjected to intimidation and bullying. Victims of severe bullying in Dutch organizations (N = 21) and non-victims (N = 30) filled out questionnaires. As predicted, victims had a lower Just World Belief, and lower self-esteem than non-victims. Moreover, victims attached higher importance to negative situations than non-victims do. The two groups demonstrated only minor differences in their attributions of internal, and stable causes to negative events. However, victims of bullying attributed causes of bullying significantly more often to specific aspects of situations. In the discussion it is suggested that in future research a distinction should be made between subgroups of victims.

College students are particularly vulnerable to tobacco initiation and use, but college prevention services are rare and often unevaluated. The present project evaluated 27 tobacco use prevention initiatives on college campuses in one southern U.S. state. Each initiative included one 20 hour/week on-campus student coordinator, a faculty or staff advisor, and a monitor. An outside evaluator rated each initiative on compliance with seven activities and five administrative necessities. Most (22) initiatives nearly met, met, or exceeded expectations, but five were noncompliant. Initiative scores correlated positively with students' and advisors' ratings, but were unrelated to the on-campus coordinator's sex, longevity in office, or past tobacco prevention experience. Though limited by not including a rating of the quality of the interventions, this program evaluation provided college tobacco prevention initiatives with an overall rating and specific feedback on how to improve, and allowed each initiative to tailor programs to its specific campus.