Background: Personal Health literacy (PHL) is essential in cardiovascular risk management. Hindrances in PHL can lead to poor cardiovascular outcomes. Purpose: To investigate whether limited PHL is associated with lower likelihoods of i) overall cardiovascular health and ii) individual cardiovascular health components as defined by the American…

The purpose of the present study was to determine the relationship between healthy lifestyle behaviors, physical fitness, and coronary risk factors in university students. 320 male and female (nm: 171; nf: 149, respectively) students from a university participated in this study voluntarily. For the determination of body composition and Body Mass…

Background: Three million U.S. women live with heart failure (HF). Purpose: This study investigated relationships among self-care activation, social support, and self-care behaviors of women living with HF. Methods: A 52-item web-based survey was completed by 246 women living with HF. Results: Women reported a mean body mass index (BMI) of 30.8 ±…

Objectives: Examine trends in diabetes-related knowledge, perceptions, and behavior among U.S. adults with and without a diagnosis of diabetes and among subpopulations at risk. Discuss implications for national diabetes education and for the National Diabetes Education Program (NDEP) in particular. Methods: Three population-based NDEP National…

Objective: To examine gender differences in the association between beliefs in heart disease preventability and 10-year incidence of coronary heart disease (CHD) in a population-based sample. Methods: A total of 2,688 Noninstitutionalized Nova Scotians without prior CHD enrolled in the Nova Scotia Health Study (NSHS95) and were followed for 10…

Background: Although the prevalence of obesity is increasing during adulthood, there have been few assessments of obesity, cardiovascular risk factors, and levels of physical activity among adult elementary school staff. Methods: Data were collected from 745 African-American and White female school personnel in a suburban school district in…

Using 7-year mortality follow-up data (n = 341) from the 1998 National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys of South Korean individuals (N = 5,414), the authors found that survey participants with suicide ideation were at increased risk of suicide mortality during the follow-up period compared with those without suicide ideation. The…

Context: Emergency Department (ED) use among the rural elderly may present a different pattern from the urban elderly, thus requiring different policy initiatives. However, ED use among the rural elderly has seldom been studied and is little understood. Purpose: To characterize factors associated with having any versus no ED use among the rural…

Objectives: Although, the relationship between childhood physical abuse and adult heart disease has been documented, very few studies have controlled for many of the known risk factors for heart disease. The objective of the current study, therefore, was to investigate the association between childhood physical abuse and adult heart disease while…

Objective: Evaluate the relationship between low social support (SS) and adherence to diet in a cardiovascular disease (CVD) lifestyle intervention trial. Design: Prospective substudy. Setting and Participants: Blood relatives/cohabitants of hospitalized cardiac patients in a randomized controlled trial (n = 458; 66% female, 35% nonwhite, mean age…

Prehypertension and heavy alcohol consumption increase the risk for primary hypertension (PH), a major predictor of cardiovascular-related morbidity and mortality. Although undergraduate college students have exhibited prehypertensive blood pressure (BP) levels and more than 40% of undergraduates drink heavily, few researchers have examined both…

This study examines the effects of marital history on the burden of cardiovascular disease in midlife. With use of data from the 1992 Health and Retirement Study, a series of nested logistic regression models was used to estimate the association between marital history and the likelihood of cardiovascular disease. Results suggest that, in midlife,…

To better understand obesity and overweight among urban African American women, the authors examined sociodemographic, behavioral, and psychological factors within body mass index (BMI) categories. A total of 496 women were recruited for cardiovascular risk factor screening from 20 urban African American churches. Study participants had a mean age…