Health Promotion For People Research Articles

Perceptions of Program Administrators Toward Health Planning for Persons with Intellectual Disabilities: A National Survey in Taiwan

Abstract Health planning is an important factor in assuring quality of care for the general population. However, in Taiwan relatively little attention has been given to this with respect to vulnerable groups of people, such as those with intellectual disabilities (ID). Using a structured questionnaire, posted to all disability service programs (n = 157) caring for people with ID, the authors examined the perceptions of directors of service programs for people with ID with respect to health planning and the development of health‐planning issues in their programs. Results indicate that although most respondents agreed with the importance of health planning and concurred with the specific health‐planning issues identified by the authors, there was a gap between perceived importance and satisfaction with how these issues were being dealt. The three greatest gaps were observed in “hearing and vision screenings,”“routine meetings on health issues,” and “regular dental health checkups for the ID population.” Using an opportunity calculation to prioritize the most promising health‐planning areas, the authors found that “emergency planning and practice,”“routine meetings on health management,”“planning for infectious disease control,”“regular oral health checkups,” and “hearing and vision screenings” were the areas with greatest opportunities for further improvement in the programs. Size and auspice of the programs were not correlated to the perceived importance and satisfactions. The authors conclude that Taiwanese health authorities need to more carefully promote health planning for people with ID within disability programs so as to ensure the quality of health care and health promotion for people with ID.

Aerobic Cycle Exercising in a Rehabilitation Program with a Wider Choice of Intensity

When patients in rehabilitation programs use cycle ergometers for aerobic fitness training, the exercise intensity is often restricted to a small range of heart rate. In this study, a wider choice of intensities was left to the patients without giving up the potential to reduce cardiac risks factors. 24 patients in 3-wk. rehabilitation programs could choose the exercise intensity up to a workload limit preset by the physical therapist. 20 of them exercised at an intensity covering the full range between the aerobic and anaerobic lactate threshold and 4 a little above. The opportunity to vary the workload was frequently used by 67%. In 75% of the exercise sessions, the patients' average heart rates exceeded moderate heart-rate targets recommended in rehabilitation and health promotion for people with moderate cardiac risks without a graded exercise test. In 72% of these sessions, the anaerobic lactate threshold at 4 mmol/L was not exceeded. But a tendency of 33% of the patients to exercise at higher blood lactate or blood pressure levels underlined the necessity of limiting the exercise intensity.

A Personal Reflection on Physical Activity, Health, and Wellness: Developments and Advancements for People with Spinal Cord Injury

People with spinal cord injury (SCI) are at risk for a variety of secondary conditions and ill effects resulting from the sedentary lifestyle often associated with disability. Health promotion interventions for people with SCI, including physical activity and exercise, are often not addressed in the rehabilitation process. The developments of the last two decades indicate the benefits of a healthy lifestyle, as increasing resources and opportunities are developed. This article traces the development of health promotion for people with SCI over two decades and advocates that health promotion, physical activity, and wellness concepts be woven into the standard rehabilitation programs along with the basic issues of SCI patient education.

Conceptual challenges in linking physical activity and disability research

R educing the functional limitations and disability that accompany aging and disease are goals of both physical activity and disability research. Efforts to link the two fields, as reflected in this supplement to the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, should expand considerably our ability to achieve these goals because of the special perspectives and strengths that each discipline brings to this collaboration. Disability research focuses on epidemiologic pathways by which disease, injury, and other conditions ultimately lead to disability and on surveillance of population levels of disability. Through its numerous adaptations, the “disablement process” model has provided a longstanding, strong guiding framework for this work. 1 Jette AM. Assessing disability in studies on physical activity. Am J Prev Med 2003;25(suppl):122–8 Google Scholar , 2 Guralnik JM, Ferrucci L. Assessing the building blocks of function: utilizing measures of functional limitation. Am J Prev Med 2003;25(suppl):112–21 Google Scholar More recently, research on health promotion for people with disabilities is being undertaken, 3 Rimmer J.H. Health promotion for people with disabilities the emerging paradigm shift from disability prevention to prevention of secondary conditions. Phys Ther. 1999; 79: 495-502 PubMed Google Scholar with a special emphasis on physical activity as both a primary and secondary prevention approach. 4 Carlson J.E. Ostir G.V. Black S.A. Markides K.S. Rudkin L. Goodwin J.S. Disability in older adults 2 physical activity as prevention. Behav Med. 1999; 24: 157-168 Crossref PubMed Scopus (66) Google Scholar , 5 Rimmer JH, Braddock D, Pitetti KH. Research on physical activity and disability: an emerging national priority. Med Sci Sports Exer 1996;28:1366–72 Google Scholar

Health promotion for people with physical, cognitive and sensory disabilities: an emerging national priority.

Despite the growth in health promotion programs for able-bodied people, very little effort has been devoted to developing programs for people with physical and cognitive disabilities. Programs for people with disabilities must be developed with full recognition of limitations caused by both the primary and secondary disability.

Positive initiatives for people with learning difficulties: promoting healthy lifestyles Roberta Astor Karen Jeffreys Positive initiatives for people with learning difficulties: promoting healthy lifestyles Macmillan 208 £14.99 0-333-67208-9 0333672089

Written mainly by learning disability nurses in Portsmouth, Positive Initiatives is about health and health promotion for people with learning disabilities and I believe it will prove a useful addition to library shelves.

Focus on health promotion: self-efficacy in oncology nursing research and practice.

To discuss self-efficacy in oncology nursing research and practice in promoting health for people with cancer. Published articles, abstracts, and books; consultations. Self-efficacy has much merit as a concept to guide oncology nursing research and practice related to health promotion. It has strong predictive capability in nononcology populations for determining the likelihood of individuals engaging in health-promotion behaviors. In oncology, it has been an effective determinant to predict disease prevention and early-detection behaviors and adaptation to cancer. Self-efficacy provides prescriptive specificity to guide clinical interventions to promote health in people with cancer. Exercise for people with cancer recently has been emphasized, and specific examples of cancer nursing research and practice using self-efficacy to increase participation in this health-promotion behavior have been suggested. Research that tests this concept further as a basis for health promotion in people with cancer is needed.

Health Promotion for People With Disabilities: The Emerging Paradigm Shift From Disability Prevention to Prevention of Secondary Conditions

The premise of this article is that, until recently, health promotion for people with disabilities has been a neglected area of interest on the part of the general health community. Today, researchers, funding agencies, and health care providers and consumers are leading an effort to establish higher-quality health care for the millions of Americans with disabilities. The aims of a health promotion program for people with disabilities are to reduce secondary conditions (eg, obesity, hypertension, pressure sores), to maintain functional independence, to provide an opportunity for leisure and enjoyment, and to enhance the overall quality of life by reducing environmental barriers to good health. A greater emphasis must be placed on community-based health promotion initiatives for people with disabilities in order to achieve these objectives.

Health promotion for people with chronic illness and physical disabilities: the connection between health psychology and disability prevention

People who have disabilities from injury or chronic illness are at risk for a variety of secondary conditions that can add to the level of disability they experience. Health promotion interventions for people with disabilities have the potential to decrease the incidence and severity of these secondary conditions, but little research has developed models of intervention that specifically address the needs of this population. Two studies were conducted to investigate the utility of integrating the Sense of Coherence (Antonovsky, 1987) and Attribution Style (Abramson et al., 1978) models into a health promotion intervention for people with disabilities. The first study suggested that 45% of the variance in a measure of secondary condition severity could be accounted for by measures of depression, Sense of Coherence and Attributional Style. The second study, a quasi-experimental treatment evaluation, indicated that a health promotion intervention for people with spinal cord injury based on these models resulted in a 37% decrease in reported limitation due to secondary conditions in the treatment group. Combined, the results from these two studies suggest a promising treatment paradigm for conducting health promotion with people who have disabilities. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Recruitment of managed care Medicare patients for a physical activity study.

Regular physical activity is recognized as essential for disease prevention and health promotion for people of all ages, ],2 and may be particularly important for the elderly. 3,4 With the rapidly increasing move to managed care in the U.S., especially within Medicare and Medicaid programs, 5 population-based approaches to increasing physical activity that are low-cost and appeal to a broad crosssection of older adults are needed. However, most studies of exercise interventions for older adults are comprised of convenience samples and do not report data on the characteristics of nonparticipants or their barriers to participation. Thus, little is known about the representativeness of such samples or what can be done to increase participation. The purpose of this study is to evaluate a strategy for recruiting older adults into a physical activity program that will be offered to members of a managed care Medicare organization. A pilot study was conducted to evaluate the recruitment strategy on the following: (1) What percentage of the eligible population consented to participate? (2) Did participants and nonparticipants differ selected subject characteristics?, and (3) What reasons for nonparticipation were reported?