No abstract

Two hundred forty-nine children were enrolled. Results show an overall improvement in children's knowledge both for the practical and theoretical classes (incident risk ratios [IRRs]: 1.2, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.1-1.2, p<0.001 and 1.1, 95% CI 1.0-1.1, p<0.001, post- versus pre-intervention). The same effect was observed for children's behavior, comparing post- versus pre-intervention for both groups (IRRs were 3.4, 95% CI 2.2-5.2, p<0.001 and 3.2 95% CI 1.9-5.5, p<0.001). CONCLUSION AND APPLICATIONS: The methodology described in this article might be usefully adopted to conduct food safety classes, contributing to the amelioration of children's awareness on food related risks and leading to significant benefit for primary prevention.

Today, Italian prisons are reporting the highest level of overcrowding ever recorded. In reference to this situation, this article proposes an ethnographic study carried out inside the prison of Padua as a voluntary 2 years’ experience. It documents the values and conventions that convicts share in prison and details the ways in which prisoners constantly construct and adapt to an informal conduct’s rule system, the inmate code. It also illustrates the interactions among fellow prisoners as scenes or plays enacted by various teams. The prisoners’ words reveal a complex universe based upon three basic conditions: loyalty, discipline and circumspection. Finally, we argue about the fading of the distinction between the prison front stage and the back stage and we analyse the possible consequences

No abstract

Objective: The high incidence of foodborne disease among children suggests the value of health promotion. Children are a high-risk group so far as foodborne disease is concerned, although they may be hard to reach with training programmes. This research investigated the use of drawings, compared with questionnaires, to evaluate the impact of a health promotion programme to improve knowledge and habits in the context of food handling and personal hygiene. Setting: Children (184) attending primary school and living in the north of Italy were enrolled in the programme. Methods: Qualitative and quantitative tools: pre- and post-intervention questionnaires were administered, and children were asked to produce pre- and post-intervention drawings about microorganisms and their effects on humans. An observation grid was built to code key features in the drawings. Results: Results clearly showed that some drawing features correlated with and predicted high scores in the questionnaire on knowledge of microorganisms. These were the use of captions, the representation of a natural context and the presence of a causal link between depicted elements. Conclusion: Study findings highlight the potential of the use of drawing as an effective evaluation tool. The use of drawing can support the design of strategies for the validation of health campaigns aimed at the amelioration of children’s food contamination–related (and perhaps other) risks.