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A household food inventory for North American Chinese
- Jessie A Satia, Ruth E Patterson, Alan R Kristal, T Gregory Hislop, Michele Pineda
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- Journal:
- Public Health Nutrition / Volume 4 / Issue 2 / April 2001
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 27 September 2007, pp. 241-247
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Objective
To determine whether a short set of questions about foods in the household can provide information about the fat-related dietary behaviour of individual household members in less-acculturated Chinese populations.
DesignCross-sectional survey.
ParticipantsThe study population included 244 adult females of Chinese ethnicity in Seattle, WA, and Vancouver, BC, Canada.
SettingBilingual interviewers collected information on the presence of 14 high-fat foods and seven reduced-fat foods in the household. Respondents were also asked about the consumption of foods and behaviour reflective of adoption of Western dietary practices, fat-related dietary behaviour, changes in consumption of high-fat foods since immigration, and sociodemographic characteristics.
ResultsAlthough this was a less-acculturated sample, many households had Western foods such as butter (58%), lunchmeats (36%), snack chips (43%), and 1% or skim milk (48%). Households with respondents who were younger, married, employed outside the home, and lived with young children had significantly more high-fat foods, while high education and longer percentage of life in North America were significantly associated with having more reduced-fat foods (P ≤ = 0.05). Participants living in households with more high-fat foods had higher-fat dietary behaviour than those with fewer high-fat foods (fat-related dietary behaviour score, 1.54 versus 1.28; P < 0.001). Women in households with more reduced-fat foods had a significantly decreased consumption of high-fat foods since immigration compared with those in households with fewer reduced-fat foods (P < 0.001). Western dietary acculturation was higher among women in households both with more high-fat foods and more reduced-fat food counterparts (P ≤ 0.05).
ConclusionsOur inventory of household foods was strongly associated with current dietary behaviour, changes in food consumption, and westernization of dietary patterns. This simple, practical measure may be a useful alternative dietary assessment tool in less-acculturated Chinese populations.
Prognosticating futures and the human experience of hope
- Sally Thorne, Valerie Oglov, Elizabeth-Anne Armstrong, T. Gregory Hislop
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- Journal:
- Palliative & Supportive Care / Volume 5 / Issue 3 / September 2007
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 24 September 2007, pp. 227-239
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Objectives: Communication between health care providers and patients with cancer and other chronic diseases typically references probabilities that certain future events will or will not occur. Beyond the context of diagnostic encounters and the transmission of “bad news,” such “prognostic” communications take place in various forms throughout the illness trajectory. It is well known that such information transmitted badly can have devastating psychosocial consequences for patients and their families and, conversely, that difficult information exchanged with sensitivity can lend tremendous support. This study aimed to extend our understanding of how such communications are received and interpreted by patients, so that we might optimally apply what we know about general principles of effective communication within the particularly challenging context of predicting futures.
Methods: We conducted a combined secondary analysis of two prior qualitative studies into patient perceptions of helpful and unhelpful health care communication with 200 cancer patients and 30 persons with chronic illness. These data sets offered a rich resource for comparing perceptions across a range of contextual variables, and secondary analysis focused on future-oriented interactions, including both prognostication and prediction.
Results: The accounts of patients with cancer and chronic illness reveal various ways in which health care communications involving future projections interact with their human experience of hope, powerfully shaping their capacity to make sense of and live with serious illness. They include a synthesis of what patients recommend health care professionals know and understand about this challenging dynamic.
Significance of results: The findings of this study offer a distinct angle of vision onto the various communications that involve future predictions, illuminating a patient perspective with the potential to inform health care communication approaches that are both informative and therapeutic. As such, the study supports a dynamic understanding of the tenuous balance between hope and honesty in the clinical encounter.