Thursday, April 4, 2013

Blog 8: Key Determinants


Problem definition:
Smoking increased the rate of preterm birth in pregnant women

Facts about Smoking during Pregnancy

1)   Direct smoking: when you smoke your baby smokes as well.
a.     When a mother smokes, inhale poisons such as nicotine, lead, arsenic. And carbon monoxide. They get into the placenta, a tissue that connects to your baby and sends oxygen and nutrients and eliminates waste.
2)   Second hand smoke
a.     According to the American Lung Association, new studies have shown that if a woman is around second hand smoke during pregnancy they are added risks. Greater chance of having a baby that weight too little and may have health problems.
3)   Nicotine replacement therapy such as patch can still affect your baby
a.     Discuss it with a health care provider


a.     Children from lower socio-economic households are more likely to be exposed to tobacco smoke in the home (54%) compared with those from professional households (18%).
b.     Migration and low education daily consumption

a.     The most preventable risk factor for an unsuccessful pregnancy outcome
b.     Marginal and unemployed smokes the most
c.      Posttraumatic tress disorder (PTSD)
                                               i.     Higher odds of smoking and nicotine dependence and lower rates for quitting
                                              ii.     Depression

3)   Educational level
a.     Younger women prone to smoke more during pregnancy
b.     Due to lack of education
c.      Unaware of health related consequences
d.     Age à intermediate factor serving as a media for the causes of the causes
e.     Common: cope with stress, less favorable social networks and poorer economic conditions

4)   Environment determinant
a.     Partner’s smoking
b.     Urban smoke more than in rural

5)   Attending prenatal care: 61.6% of smokers compared with 85.6% of non-smokers during pregnancy attended the classes meaning, those who attended the prenatal class were less likely to smoke.  This is considered a behavioral determinant specifically because it depends on the Mother’s behavior (action) of consistently attending class. http://www.iomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1471-2393-10-24.pdf)

6)    Occupation is another behavioral determinant of smoking in general. Direct statistics could only be found from a study performed in Canada, where the highest percentage (55.5 %) of workers in the fishing/foresting/mining profession smoked. The second and third highest rates of smoking by occupation were transportation and construction workers where 46.1 and 44.6% of the workers smoked respectively.


Interesting fact: Researchers found that almost 22 percent of pregnant white women aged 15 to 44 smoked cigarettes, compared with just over 14 percent of pregnant African American women and 6.5 percent of Hispanic women in the same age range.  The study was done by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

2 comments:

  1. Your problem definition is still implying causality. It is basically stating that smoking increased preterm births...
    Once again, there should not be an implication of causality in your problem definition.

    You have done a great job categorizing the determinants.
    One aspect to reconsider is what you have listed under biological determinants. Children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds may arguably be more suitable for socioeconomic than biologic.

    Remember that you don't have to have factors under each possible category. It is okay to choose only those categories that apply to your situation.

    Under educational level, the last two bullets (d&e)did not make any sense to me.
    I like that each determinant has a link that references it.

    When writing the paper however, your wok may look neater if you list the references at the end and only highlight them as they relate to what you write as you go along

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  2. I thought your entry was very well detailed and included several different categories of key determinants. The problem definition is just slightly vague and could use some refinement in its specificity. You do, however, have a plethora of different factors to spring board off of to discuss in the paper. What I think may be an issue is collecting enough sources to deal with each one of the key determinants to give them proper credit in your paper. The format of the blog entry is going to be really beneficial for writing your paper because it is essentially already in outline format, and you'll just need to fill in the blanks as needed.

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