The design, logic, and results of a two-year health education study directed at improving rates of patient adherence to antituberculosis medical regimens are presented. An incentive scheme to reward positive health behaviors plus targeted educational counseling sessions was implemented in a randomized clinical controlled trial. The 205 subjects who participated in the study are categorized according to patients with active tuberculosis (n = 88) or preventive patients with no evidence of active disease (n = 117). Patients in each of these groups were randomly assigned to a special intervention (SI) group or a usual care (UC) control group and were followed monthly throughout their treatment program. While SI patients with active tuberculosis demonstrated higher levels of appointment-keeping behavior and mean percent of medication taken compared to UC patients, no statistically significant differences between the two groups were found. Preventive therapy patients assigned to the SI group, however, were significantly more likely than UC patients to remain in care during their 12-month regimen (64% vs 47%; p = .003). Furthermore, SI patients had significantly higher levels of adherence to their medical regimen compared to UC patients (68% vs 38%; p less than .001). These results demonstrate the positive effects of a structured health education program on the improvement of continuity of care and adherence behavior among patients with tuberculosis.
The ability of the opportunity cost framework to predict the risk of a teen birth is tested by analyzing the relationship between adolescents' perceptions of opportunity and the odds of a teen birth across levels of community opportunity. Patterns of this relationship are compared across African American, Latina, and White teens and across socioeconomic status (SES) level. High educational expectations protect Whites, Latinas, and low-SES teens from low-opportunity communities from a teen birth.
For Maryland residents with AIDS there has been an improvement in survival since 1987. Zidovudine therapy and perhaps other aspects of care associated with it have contributed substantially to the improved survival.
In this article, we examine differences across three racial/ethnic groups in (a) the psychometric properties of the Early Childhood HOME Inventory and the HOME-Short Form and (b) the prediction of the two versions of the HOME Inventory to cognitive and behavioral outcomes among preschool children. Data are taken from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth-Child Supplement (NLSY-CS) and the Infant Health and Development Program (IHDP) sample. Findings suggest few racial/ethnic differences in the psychometric properties of either version of the HOME scale. Both show better prediction of cognitive child outcomes for all three racial/ethnic groups. Both show better prediction of child outcomes generally for European American than for Hispanic and African American families. Findings suggest that although certain aspects of parenting are common, these dimensions of parenting are not equally important in explaining child outcomes for different racial/ethnic subgroups.
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