Nursing Workforce Issues: Strategically Positioning Nurses to Facilitate Cancer Prevention and Control

The number of cancer survivors is increasing, but at a staggering cost. These costs can be reduced or contained by preventing cancer and its recurrence. Nurses play a critical role in cancer prevention, a role that will rapidly expand as the number of oncology specialists decreases. It is crucial, therefore, that nurses increase their involvement in cancer prevention. To prepare nurses for this larger role, educational programs in cancer prevention and detection must be instituted for all nurses, particularly those in rural and medically underserved areas. The Professional Education for Prevention and Early Detection program at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center has developed two nurse education programs: outreach programs for nurses involved in the community and in-house programs for those in clinical practice. These approaches have proven to be enormously effective in developing the nursing workforce as agents of cancer prevention.     

Dangers of reducing the range of food choice in developing countries

This article is based on a lecture, “Decreasing variety of plant foods used in developing countries” given at the Joint Congress of the Confoederatio Internationalis ad Qualitates Plantarum Edulium Perquirendas (CIQ) and Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Qualitatsforschung (Pflanzliche Nahrungsmittel) E. V. (DGQ) on The Role of Plant Foods in Preventive Medicine, 12–14th September, 1978 at Reading University. The lecture has been published in Qualitas Plantarum, 1979, Vol. 29, Nos. 1–2. Dr. W. Junk b.v. publishers. The Hague, Netherlands.     

ADOLESCENT BEHAVIOR AND SEXUALLY TRANSMITTED DISEASES: THE DILEMMA OF HUMAN PAPILLOMAVIRUS

Adolescence is a period of physical, cognitive, psychosocial, and moral development that often results in risk-taking behavior. As a consequence, adolescents are at high risk for sexually transmitted disease (STD). Two of the most common STDs in the United States, chlamydia and human papillomavirus (HPV), affect millions of adolescent women. HPV, contrasted with chlamydia, poses a unique challenge to health care providers. In addition to causing genital warts, HPV has been shown to be the causative agent in the development of cervical cancer. Interventions that are effective in decreasing the transmission of chlamydia, such as increasing condom use, are less effective in prevention of HPV. Efforts to increase adolescent awareness of HPV, to increase age of first coitus, and to decrease numbers of sexual partners are more effective for HPV prevention. Early screening for HPV, smoking cessation, and health promotion may be effective in decreasing the incidence of cervical cancer in young women. Nurse practitioners and other primary health care providers need a more holistic approach to the prevention of HPV in adolescent women.     

Vitamin D Status Is a Biological Determinant of Health Disparities

BackgroundIn human beings, dark skin requires more exposure to ultraviolet light to synthesize the same amount of vitamin D as lighter skin. It is has been repeatedly shown that at the latitude of the United States there are vitamin D disparities related to skin color. Although inadequate vitamin D status and health disparities have been associated with many of the same diseases, neither nutrition policy nor public health policy in the United States currently recognizes any role at all for vitamin D as a determinant of health disparities.ObjectiveThis study investigated the relationship between health, skin color, and vitamin D nutriture in the US population.DesignThe design is cross-sectional, correlational, and can be generalized to the population of the United States.ParticipantsWe used data from 12,505 (unweighted) subjects (3,402 non-Hispanic blacks, 3,143 Mexican Americans, and 5,960 non-Hispanic whites), aged 13 years or older, from the continuous National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2003-2006.Main outcome measureSelf-rated health, a repeatedly validated indicator of objective health status, was used as a continuous measure of health.Statistical analyses performedUsing software appropriate for the complex survey design of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, the study consisted of six regression models, one predicting vitamin D status and five predicting self-rated health.ResultsControlling for the covariates sex, interview language, country of birth, tobacco use, age, body mass index, and leisure exercise as well as the socioeconomic variables education and family income, remaining disparities in self-rated health are greatly reduced or eliminated by controlling for serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels.ConclusionsWe found that socioeconomic factors are the strongest determinant of skin-color based health disparities in the US population, but that it may not be possible to eliminate health disparities in the United States without eliminating the skin-color–related disparities in vitamin D nutriture.