bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
How will a life course framework be used to tackle wider social determinants of health?
Authors: Nicolau Belinda , Marcenes Wagner 
Published: September 2012

AbstractThe life course framework, proposed by Kuh and Schlomo in 1997, offers policy makers the means to understand the interaction between nature and nurture. This conceptual model illustrates how an individual's biological resources are influenced by their genetic endowment, their prenatal and postnatal development and their social and physical environment, both in early life and throughout the life course. Health is conceptualized as a dynamic process connecting biological and social elements that are affected by previous experiences and by present circumstances. Therefore, exposure at different stages of people's lives can either enhance or deplete the individual's health resources. Indeed, life course processes are of many kinds, including parent–child relationships, levels of social deprivation, the acquisition of emotional and behavioural assets in adolescence and the long‐term effects of occupational hazards and work stress. The long‐term effects of nature and nurture combine to influence disease outcomes. It is only in the last decade that theories, methods and new data have begun to be amalgamated, allowing us to further our understanding of health over the life course in ways that may eventually lead to more effective health policies and better health care. This article discusses life course concepts and how this framework can enlighten our understanding of wider social determinants of health, and provides a few examples of potential interventions to tackle their impact on health.
Interdisciplinary health promotion: a call for theory‐based interventions drawing on the skills of multiple disciplines
Authors: Newton Jonathon Timothy 
Published: September 2012

AbstractPromoting the health of populations demands the adoption of a perspective exploring the societal, political, community, family and individual determinants of health. I will argue that to develop interventions to modify health‐related behaviours and health risks requires collaboration with a range of disciplines, in order to draw upon their theoretical, empirical and oftentimes political knowledge. To illustrate this thesis, I will draw upon research in three areas: improving oral health–related behaviours in individuals with periodontal disease and childhood caries; encouraging early recognition in head and neck cancer; and managing dental anxiety. Reviews of oral health education in the early 1990s suggested that approaches based on education were largely ineffective in the absence of the provision of fluoride supplementation. More recently, high‐quality research has identified simple, theory‐based interventions that can improve adherence to specific oral hygiene–related behaviours. Similarly, a range of studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of motivational interviewing for targeting caries‐related behaviours in targeted groups. Dental anxiety remains a significant barrier to the uptake of dental services, and again, by working in multi‐disciplinary teams, a proportionate and comprehensive range of interventions can be adopted to alleviate the burden of dental fear. Finally, head and neck cancer has potentially serious effects for sufferers, but often presents late for a variety of reasons. Through developing a theoretical model of help‐seeking behaviour, psychologists have been able to identify targets for interventions and work together with the healthcare team to develop these.
Water fluoridation in Victoria, Australia: The Value of National Research
Authors: Neil Andrew 
Published: September 2012

AbstractWater fluoridation has become the centrepiece in dental caries prevention for the Australian population since its introduction in 1953 in Beaconsfield, Tasmania. With the notable exception until recently of Brisbane, residents of the state and territory capital cities have enjoyed the dental health benefits of this important public health initiative for at least 33 years. For many communities in rural and regional Australia, however, the introduction of water fluoridation has only commenced in relative recent years – if at all. These efforts in recent years have been greatly assisted by the research of Professor John Spencer and his colleagues at the Australian Research Centre for Population Oral Health (ARCPOH). This paper highlights some major pieces of research conducted by ARCPOH and demonstrates the application of that research to the extension of water fluoridation in Victoria.
Building the links between surveillance, research, and policy and practice – dental public health experiences in Australia
Authors: Rogers John 
Published: September 2012

AbstractObjectivesTo identify how to translate dental public health surveillance and broader research into policy and practice.MethodsVia a literature review to identify both the potential uses of surveillance data and key elements in the policy making process. Then through a consideration of Australian dental public health examples to identify ways to build links between this research and policy making.ResultsThe development of dental public health policy can be complex. Different notions of evidence are held by researchers and policy makers. A cultural gap divides these two groups. Translation of research into policy is more likely if an issue is moved up the policy agenda through judicial articluation of the problem with an associated policy proposal and where polictical factors are positive. If these elements exist, a policy outccome is more possible when a ‘policy window’ opens. Five ways to build the links between surveillance, research and policy and practice are to communicate across the cultural gap; be prepared for chance opportunities to transfer knowledge; undertake policy relevant research; don't abuse research evidence by making exaggerated claims; and provide timely dissemination of surveillance and research findings. Structural barriers to academics having greater engagement with policy agencies also need to be addressed.ConclusionTranslating surveillance and broader research evidence into policy requires active management rather than expecting passive diffusion. Researchers need to understand and act on the external factors that are likely to affect the uptake of their research if they want their research to influence policy and practice.
How population‐level data linkage might impact on dental research
Authors: Slack‐Smith Linda 
Published: September 2012

AbstractThere is the potential for substantial gains in dental epidemiology with increasing use of population‐level data and data linkage. The advantage of population record linkage, from an epidemiological perspective, is that it is not biased and no‐one is excluded. This has important implications for human rights because generally the people who are excluded from studies or do not participate are the most marginalized. There are a number of places in the world that have high‐quality population record linkage in the area of health including Oxford, Aberdeen, Rochester, Manitoba and Scandinavia. In Western Australia, there is a unique set of databases on the entire population, which includes detailed information on all births, deaths and hospital admissions since 1980, these are linkable with many other data sets. We can now link birth and hospital admissions with population databases for characteristics such as intellectual disability and birth defects. It is even possible to link Commonwealth data with State data. It is now possible to link birth defects data and midwives data with data from the Commonwealth Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme as a form of pharmacovigilance, to detect potential associations between medicine use in pregnancy and birth defects such as cleft lip and palate. Data linkage is increasingly available in Australia, with other states setting up systems similar to Western Australia and may offer greater insight into oral health.
Economic evaluation of preventive dental programs: what can they tell us?
Authors: Morgan Mike , Mariño Rodrigo , Wright Clive , Bailey Denise , Hopcraft Matthew 
Published: September 2012

AbstractThe role of public health program planners is to determine the effectiveness of public health programs, what recommendations should be made, what future initiatives should be taken, and what policies should be developed. At a basic level, to choose between competing alternatives, two characteristics of an intervention must be considered; these are its outcome and its cost. Based on cost and outcome, planners must select the option that offers the most advantages. Economic evaluation is commonly adopted by decision makers in the health sector to investigate the effectiveness of public health programs and to help plan future initiatives. Economic evaluation assists decision makers who must weigh the information it provides in the context of many and often competing options. In this way, an economic evaluation is an aid to decision making rather than the decision itself. Economic evaluation is becoming essential for informed decision making, with potential implications for public health policy and practice and for clinical practice too. While economic evaluations are commonly used in decision‐making processes about health programs, few examples exist in the oral health literature. In the case of preventive oral health programs, economic analysis is often difficult, largely because it makes demands on epidemiological and demographic data that are hard to meet. This study will address the concepts and tools required to conduct economic evaluations of prevention programs. The emphasis will be on oral health and preventive dental programs, although the concepts presented could be useful for other public health programs by practitioners and managers with the aim of producing effective and efficient oral health programs.
Shaping the next generation of ‘population oral healthers’
Authors: Treasure Elizabeth T. 
Published: September 2012

AbstractObjectiveThe aim of this paper is to discuss the training and development needs of those people who will form the next generation working in the field of population oral health.MethodThe paper represents the personal views of the author based upon an analysis of current training programmes in a number of countries and variation in the international working conditions.DiscussionThe next generation of population oral healthers will need to be versatile in their approach to the oral health problems they encounter. The simple problems may well have been solved or have stopped improving. The future generation will work in a variety of roles: commissioning and designing services, providing and evaluating services, educating or researching. The working environment will also show considerable variation and diversity from entirely private systems through mixed economies to public systems and, of course, no system at all. Current curricula vary but tends to emphasis traditional epidemiological and statistical skills as well as service delivery. There is also some evidence that training opportunities are limited to those with clinical backgrounds. Universities continue to emphasis high quality, high impact and high financial value research as they seek to maximize income and climb international league tables. National research funding bodies are seeking to address major issues such as global warming, food security and international security. Health research appears to have a number of foci: increasingly complex biomedical research, economic and effectiveness research and the complex questions around diseases of poverty and lifestyle. Access to funding will be increasingly competitive.ConclusionsThe next generation will need to access and understand an increasing range of disciplines using a wide range of transferable and political skills as they work across a diverse range of social situations and disease states. A key issue will be the requirement for them to be adaptable and flexible as they work to improve oral health.
Transcultural dental training: addressing the oral health care needs of people from culturally diverse backgrounds
Authors: Mariño Rodrigo , Morgan Mike , Hopcraft Matthew 
Published: September 2012

AbstractAustralia is a culturally and linguistically diverse country with a population derived from over 140 countries and including 240 language groups. Reflecting this, there has been a significant increase in cultural diversity among undergraduate dental students. It has been recognized that in order for dental students to interact and respond effectively to the diverse cultural needs of their patients, students themselves must be aware of cultural differences and respect patients’ worldviews. In response to this challenge, dental students will need to have the theoretical knowledge to understand culturally‐influenced health behaviours as well as the ability to communicate effectively with culturally diverse patients. Currently, the culture of dental students contrasts with the patients they treat, which may in turn affect the interaction between dental students and their patients. Given this context, new graduates need both to effectively communicate with patients from diverse communities and have an understanding of culturally influenced health behaviours. It has been proposed that dental graduates need to improve their knowledge of a variety of cultural values, beliefs, practices and attitudes. The literature in the area of cultural awareness and education for oral health professionals concentrates on both exploring health professionals’ knowledge and attitudes toward transcultural care or the need for transcultural training. This paper provides an overview of the transcultural issues in oral health care which might confront dental students when treating culturally diverse patients. It will also discuss possible modifications to the dental curriculum to ensure that the future oral health workforce understands the complex health care needs of a multicultural society. This information will give planners and stakeholders an insight into the nature of the cultural issues which future dentists are likely to encounter while treating patients from diverse cultural backgrounds. This would help to establish the need to incorporate transcultural awareness modules to enhance quality of care and to respond effectively and sensitively to cultural issues.
Guest Editorial on the Festschrift “Challenges in population oral health for the 21st Century”
Authors: McGrath Colman , Lawrence Herenia P. , Blinkhorn Anthony 
Published: September 2012

AbstractThis Festschrift provides important and valuable guidance on population oral health. It is unfortunate that it coincides with the retirement of one of population oral health's pioneers, Professor John (AJ) Spencer, who has made significant contributions to the subject over the last 35 years. Oral diseases and disorders remain prevalent and have detrimental effects on individuals, and society‐at‐large. Many of our attempts to improve population oral health through existing oral health services have met with limited success, owing to the focus on ‘care’ rather than ‘cure’. It has long been recognised that oral diseases are largely behavioural in origin; but this approach at the individual level has not been entirely successful. There is a need to consider ‘mid‐ and up‐stream’ approaches to changing oral health and health care delivery systems. However social inequalities are a major determinant of oral health, and their influence in oral health are omnipresent, which emphasises the important role of population oral health in future health care strategies. The Festschrift provides theoretical and empirical evidence of the need for further epidemiological investigations (particularly life course studies), innovative approaches to oral health surveillance and oral health outcome evaluation, plus a realisation that multidisciplinary approaches are the way forward. In an information and globalization era, we must put the ‘population’ into oral health and this is our challenge for the 21st Century.
Genome‐wide analysis of Nilaparvata lugens nymphal responses to high‐density and low‐quality rice hosts
Authors: Hu Ding‐Bang , Luo Bing‐Qing , Li Jie , Han Yu , Jiang Ting‐Ru , Liu Jia , Wu Gang , Hua Hong‐Xia , Xiong Yan‐Fei , Li Jun‐Sheng 
Published: September 2012

AbstractThe brown planthopper (BPH) Nilaparvata lugens is an economically important pest on rice plants. In this study, the higher population density and yellow‐ripe stage of rice plants were used to construct adverse survival conditions (ASC) against BPH nymphs. Simultaneously, the low population density and tillering stage of rice plants were used to establish a suitable survival condition (SSC) as a control. Solexa/Illumina sequencing was used to identify genes of BPH nymphs responding to ASC. Significantly longer duration development of BPH nymphs and significantly lower brachypterous ratio of BPH adults were observed by ASC compared with SSC. A total of 2 544 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were obtained and analyzed by BLASTx, Gene Ontology and KEGG Orthology. Gene ontology analysis revealed that the DEGs were mainly involved in categories of cell, cell part, cellular process, binding, catalytic, organelle and metabolic processes. 1 138 DEGs having enzyme commission numbers were assigned to different metabolic pathways. The largest clusters were neurodegenerative diseases (137, 12.0%), followed by carbohydrate metabolism (113, 9.9%), amino acid metabolism (94, 8.3%), nucleotide metabolism (76, 6.7%), energy metabolism (64, 5.6%), translation (60, 5.3%), lipid metabolism (58, 5.1%), and folding, sorting and degradation (52, 4.6%). Expressing profile of 11 DEGs during eight nymphal developmental stages of BPH were analyzed by quantitative real‐time polymerase chain reaction. The 11 genes exhibited differential expression between ASC and SSC during at least one developmental stage. The DEGs identified in this study provide molecular proof of how BPH reconfigures its gene expression profile to adapt to overcrowding and low‐quality hosts.
The Political Geographies of Urban Polarization: A Critical Review of Research on Divided Cities
Authors: Allegra Marco , Casaglia Anna , Rokem Jonathan 
Published: September 2012

AbstractThis article aims at providing a review of various streams of literature dealing with the spatial fragmentation of cities. In the last two decades many different contributions emphasized the growing fragmentation of the urban environment; the idea of “divided city” covers a multiplicity of approaches, methodologies and field of research. Still, the “divided city” literature tends to elevate a small number of cities to paradigmatic examples and to focus on abstract categories based on single factor explanations of urban fragmentation. The article, while accepting the hypothesis that the urban context is increasingly fragmented, argues that systems of coordinates – more than a taxonomy or a hierarchy – is needed to make sense of this phenomenon and draw significan comparison between cities. The article also maintains that a significant angle to look at urban polarization relates to the configuration of urban governance and political power. The article therefore considers three main areas connected to the distinction between polity, politics, and policy – and the three corresponding ideal‐types of partitioned, contested and discrete city – where the conflict focuses respectively on the jurisdictional shape of governance, the degrees and venues of access to decision‐making, and frame and contents of public policies.
The feral horse foot. Part A: observational study of the effect of environment on the morphometrics of the feet of 100Australian feral horses
Authors: Hampson BA , de Laat MA , Mills PC , Pollitt CC 
Published: September 2012

AimTo better understand the morphology of, and the effect of different travel patterns and varying substrate environments on, the feral horse foot to better manage the feet of domestic horses.MethodsThe left forefeet of 20 adult feral horses from each of five geographically separated populations in Australia (n = 100) were investigated. Populations were selected on the basis of substrate hardness under foot and the amount of travel typical for the population. Feet were radiographed and photographed and 40 morphometric measurements of each foot were obtained.ResultsOf the 40 parameters, 37 differed significantly (P < 0.05) among the populations, which suggested that substrate hardness and travel distance have an effect on foot morphology. Harder substrates and longer travel distances were associated with short hoof walls and minimal hoof wall flaring. Softer substrates and moderate travel distances were associated with long flared walls, similar to that of typical untrimmed feet of domestic horses.ConclusionsThe morphology of the feral horse foot appeared to be affected by the distance travelled and by the abrasive qualities and mechanical properties of the substrate under foot. There were marked differences in some conformation parameters between the feral horses in the current study and domestic horses in previous studies. Although the conformation of the feral horse foot may have some prescriptive value, concerns regarding abnormal foot anatomy warrant further investigation.
Use of online sources of information by dental practitioners: findings from The Dental Practice‐Based Research Network
Authors: Funkhouser Ellen , Agee Bonita S. , Gordan Valeria V. , Rindal D. Brad , Fellows Jeffrey L. , Qvist Vibeke , McClelland Jocelyn , Gilbert Gregg H. ,   The DPBRN Collaborative Group
Published: September 2012

AbstractObjective: Estimate the proportion of dental practitioners who use online sources of information for practice guidance.Methods: From a survey of 657 dental practitioners in The Dental Practice‐Based Research Network, four indicators of online use for practice guidance were calculated: read journals online, obtained continuing education (CDE) through online sources, rated an online source as most influential, and reported frequently using an online source for guidance. Demographics, journals read, and use of various sources of information for practice guidance in terms of frequency and influence were ascertained for each.Results: Overall, 21 percent (n = 138) were classified into one of the four indicators of online use: 14 percent (n = 89) rated an online source as most influential and 13 percent (n = 87) reported frequently using an online source for guidance; few practitioners (5 percent, n = 34) read journals online, fewer (3 percent, n = 17) obtained CDE through online sources. Use of online information sources varied considerably by region and practice characteristics. In general, the four indicators represented practitioners with as many differences as similarities to each other and to offline users.Conclusion: A relatively small proportion of dental practitioners use information from online sources for practice guidance. Variation exists regarding practitioners' use of online source resources and how they rate the value of offline information sources for practice guidance.