Hazardous/harmful drinking among college students is increasingly becoming a global health concern. Previous studies have mostly paid more attention to the prevalence and risk factors of alcohol use disorder based on the public health approach, and less is understood about psychological mechanisms and protective factors of problem drinking…

Background: Social factors play an important role in adolescents' behaviors. This study aims to understand percentages of health risk behaviors across country in Europe, North America, and China; explore the associations between friendly school and family contexts and involvement for several health risk behaviors among adolescents. Methods: Data…

Purpose: Over the years, many upstream health policies have sought to reduce smoking across populations. While smoking has been substantially reduced, the effects of these policies on education-smoking gradient remain unclear. The present paper compares the education-smoking gradient among the Generation X and the millennials, who grew up with…

Background: The use of electronic cigarettes (e-cigarette) offers potential to facilitate cigarette smoking cessation, yet potentially increases risk of cigarette smoking initiation. This relationship has been primarily modeled in mathematical ways that often do not represent real-world complexities, which could inform decisions regarding local…

Background: Opioid use has reached epidemic proportions in rural communities in the United States and injection of drugs is commonly used. As a result of shared or reusing needles and syringes, the risk for contracting blood-borne diseases is significantly increased. Rural areas face many social and attitudinal barriers regarding syringe exchange…

Monitoring the Future (MTF) is a long-term study of American adolescents, college students, and adult high school graduates through age 60. The study is funded under a series of investigator-initiated, competing research grants from the National Institute on Drug Abuse and has been conducted annually by the University of Michigan's Institute for…

Background: Ensuring the optimum development of all children and their attainment of age-appropriate educational outcomes is of great interest to public health researchers and professionals. Bullying and mentoring have opposite effects on child development and educational attainment. Mentoring exerts protective effects on youths against risky…

One of 5 women are sexually assaulted during college, resulting not only in immediate suffering, but also negative consequences that affect their career trajectory and success over a lifetime (Krebs et al., 2016; Loya, 2015). Although previous research has focused on the individual predictors of violence, more recent research has hypothesized the…

Background: Stunting continues to affect young children as a global nutritional disorder. The aim of our study was to assess the prevalence, associated risk factors and spatial clustering for stunting in a disadvantaged South African District. Methods: A community-based cross-sectional weighted survey of households was conducted in the iLembe…

Nonfatal injuries are considered as one of the major public health hazards affecting schoolchildren, and the majority of these injuries occur at school or in the home. A cross-sectional study was conducted over a period of 3 months, March-May 2015. The participants were 4,355 Jordanian schoolchildren in Grades 7-12. The Pearson ?[superscript 2]…

Internet addiction (IA) is prevalent among adolescents and imposes a serious public health threat. Familial risk and protective factors may co-exist and interact with each other to determine IA. We conducted a cross-sectional survey among 9,618 Secondary 1 to 4 students in Hong Kong, China. About 16% of the surveyed students were classified as…

Due to its high prevalence and associated risk of poor academic and health outcomes, adverse childhood experiences and trauma are considered a public health epidemic. In response, there has been a surge of initiatives aimed at helping institutions and individuals serving people with histories of trauma to adopt a trauma-informed care (TIC)…

Cigarette smoking has widely received the attention of international and local health bodies. Efforts are being made towards curbing smoking prevalence globally with a view to reduce the health, economic and social effects of smoking in the society. While some developed countries are recording success in this effort mainly through stringent…

Signal detection analysis was used to evaluate a combination of sociodemographic, acculturation, mental health, health care, and chronic disease risk factors potentially associated with diabetes in a sample of 4,505 semirural Mexican American adults. Overall, 8.9% of adults had been diagnosed with diabetes. The analysis resulted in 12 mutually…

Women are more vulnerable to the effects of alcohol than men. They get intoxicated more quickly and have a higher blood alcohol level than men, even when body weight and alcohol consumption are the same. Despite this we are seeing a convergence of the drinking patterns of young women and young men, including binge drinking. In this research, 20…