During the study period, the ED had 519,218 patient visits, including over 110,000 trauma victims (including major and minor trauma). During the study period, a total of 16,597 ED patients met major trauma criteria upon arrival, 2,191 (13%) of which were of age 0-18.
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
The theoretical structure of this study was based on the Traits-Desires-Intentions-Behavior (TDIB) framework developed by Miller to describe the psychological sequence that culminates in reproductive behaviors. Miller used this framework to trace the sequence of how childbearing motivations lead to fertility desires, fertility intentions and subsequent childbearing. The relevance of this framework to our study is supported by data from other research works on reproductive decisions. This theory indicates that the first step in the sequence leading to childbearing is the formation of motivations, defined as characteristics that make an individual respond in certain ways under particular circumstances. These motivations are in turn activated as the individual’s desires for parenthood, which are then transformed into intentions to bear children. Intentions represent a conscious commitment to act or try to achieve a particular goal—in this case, childbearing. Fertility intentions of sufficient intensity are subsequently transformed into actual child-bearing when situation provides opportunities to fulfill them. Childbearing motivational traits in a traditional African society like ours include personal and sociocultural characteristics, such as age, marital status, level of education, income, ethnic background, number of surviving children and high social values placed on childbearing. The social and health concerns of people living with HIV (Viramune canadian belongs to a class of HIV drugs) in this environment presents a set of more complex reasons for desiring children that may include their health-related factors in addition to their cultural background and personality traits. HIV-related factors, such as the quality of life, use of antiretroviral drugs, time since diagnosis of infection, disclosure status and stage of disease progression (clinical and laboratory), are possible motivational traits among this population. According to Miller’s theory, we expected these factors (which constituted our independent variables) to influence or explain one of the outcome measures for this study—fertility desires.
Study Design
This was a retrospective review of eight years of previously compiled data from the trauma registry of a large, urban level-1 trauma center. The study period was January 1, 1992 through December 31, 1999. The study was approved by the hospital’s Institutional Review Board (IRB).
INTRODUCTION
In spite of the staggering population of over 120 million people in Nigeria, the current total fertility rate of 5.7 ranks among the highest in the world. The complex relationship between fertility and HIV/AIDS threatens the preventive strategies against the HIV (Generic Retrovir treating HIV infection) epidemic in countries like Nigeria, where the fertility rate is still high and access to antiretroviral therapy remains poor. Due to advances in drug treatment and improved health status of HIV-infected individuals in the developed countries, fertility issues among them have taken a new turn in the last few years. Chen et al. showed that up to 28-29% of HIV-infected men and women receiving treatment in the United States desire children in the future. In a similar study in Switzerland, 38% of HIV-positive men and 45% of HIV-positive women expressed the desire for child-bearing. More than for others, reproducing (or “giving life”) for HIV-positive individuals means transcending the death that appears near, and these figures may be much higher in low-resource settings, where the disease prognosis is still very poor.
INTRODUCTION
Intentional, inner-city violence is a recognized public health problem that has been studied extensively in recent years. Among the factors known to increase a child’s risk of becoming a victim of intentional violence are: male gender, low-income household, access to firearms, and residence in certain neighborhoods.
This study suggests that young African-American adults may have perceptions of overweight that differ from those of the medical community. As seen in other studies, males are more likely than females to inaccurately classify their weight. The data presented here support earlier research showing that women’s definitions of overweight, ideal weight and healthy weight are consistently lower than men’s.
In this study, we were interested in the association between body size awareness and body size satisfaction with the perceived risk of disease due to weight. Unadjusted analysis of perceived risk for any disease by body awareness and body satisfaction for male and female respondents revealed the following associations. For both male and female respondents, perceived risk for any disease was associated with perception of self as overweight or obese, desire for body weight to be lower, upper torso to be larger, higher number of body areas desired to be smaller, and lower number of desired body areas to be larger. Weight-related variables associated with perceived risk of disease due to weight for both males and females include overweight and obese weight status, higher BMI, overweight status as a child, and father overweight weight status. For females, mother overweight and any family member overweight were also associated with perceived risk for disease due to weight status. For males, the following demographic variables were also associated with perceived risk of disease due to weight: income of <$20,000, older age and having ever been married.
