PubMed Health⌕ Search

SEARCH · PubMed Health

Results for “Dynamic Programming”

Explore indexed PubMed citations for clinical trials, systematic reviews and public health research. Read source abstracts and follow each citation to its original PubMed record.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 433 records · Page 24Linked to original sources
PubMed1997

Do family planning programs affect fertility preferences? A literature review.

A literature review finds few studies about whether family planning programs have reduced fertility preferences. The strong and surprising evidence from Matlab, Bangladesh, demonstrated that this intensive program did not decrease preferences; however, it did crystallize latent demand for fewer children, resulting in a demand for contraception. One cross-national multivariate study was consistent with this finding. A few intracountry multivariate studies found small program effects, decreasing the number of children that couples want. An intensive multimethod study in India found plausible larger effects. Most studies of program media effects are flawed by possible selection bias, but one longitudinal study avoids this pitfall and finds large effects for one country. Program feedback effects are plausible but not yet demonstrated empirically. The effects of a coercive program are plausible, at least in China, but not definitively demonstrated. Several promising unpublished studies may strengthen the case for program effects in reducing fertility preferences, now often based on plausible but not conclusive evidence. Stronger generalizations require better studies of a wider range of locations.

Choice Behavior↗
PubMed1993

Health of the nation: way forward in sexual health.

Sexual health is a wide concept encompassing education, health promotion and disease prevention, diagnosis and management of sexually transmitted diseases, screening and counselling for HIV antibodies, management of HIV infected patients, family planning, termination of pregnancy, psychosexual counselling, prevention of cervical and lower genital tract cancers, and sexual abuse. Implementation of The Health of the Nation (1992) will include assessing the current situation, views, alliances and interventions, need for research and development and within alliances setting challenging but achievable targets. The Health of the Nation includes a target for gonorrhoea which is a surrogate for partner change, sexually transmitted diseases in general and HIV infection, and a target for conceptions among those under 16 years of age. These targets need to be adjusted locally and may be staged. All interventions to achieve these targets must be available. Implementation of The Health of the Nation to achieve the main objectives which are to reduce the incidence of HIV infection and other sexually transmitted diseases as well as reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies and provision of effective family planning services will be challenging but sexual health gain will be well worthwhile.

Family Planning Services↗
PubMedDate not supplied

The impact of the Postponing Sexual Involvement curriculum among youths in California.

Postponing Sexual Involvement (PSI) is a widely implemented middle school curriculum designed to delay the onset of sexual intercourse. In an evaluation of its effectiveness among seventh and eighth graders in California, 10,600 youths from schools and community-based organizations statewide were recruited and participated in randomly assigned intervention or control groups; the curriculum was implemented by either adult or youth leaders. Survey data were collected before the program was implemented, and at three months and 17 months afterward. At three months, small but statistically significant changes were found in fewer than half of the measured attitudes, behaviors and intentions related to sexual activity; at 17 months, none of these significant positive effects of the PSI program had been sustained. At neither follow-up were there significant positive changes in sexual behavior; Youths in treatment and control groups were equally likely to have become sexually active, and youths in treatment groups were not less likely than youths in control groups to report a pregnancy or a sexually transmitted infection. The evaluation suggests that PSI may be too modest in length and scope to have an impact on youths' sexual behavior.

Adolescent↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Education Now and Babies Later (ENABL): life history of a campaign to Postpone Sexual Involvement.

Education Now and Babies Later (ENABL), a statewide adolescent pregnancy prevention initiative, was inaugurated in California in June 1992. Developed by the state's Office of Family Planning, ENABL utilized a five-session intervention curriculum, Postponing Sexual Involvement (PSI), targeted at delaying the onset of sexual activity among youths aged 12-14. Schoolwide and community-based activities, along with a statewide media and public relations campaign, reinforced the intervention's message. Data collected from nearly 9,000 surveys, 75 individual interviews and 50 focus groups indicated that youths, parents and community representatives supported the initiative and endorsed its message, although most recommended changes to the curriculum. However, because no impact on sexual behavior could be demonstrated, the campaign was abruptly terminated in February 1996, despite recommendations that the program be retained and improved.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1997

Innovative collaboration to prevent repeated adolescent pregnancies.

Nurse educators from a university setting and staff from the county health department collaborated to establish an innovative program to prevent repeated pregnancy in adolescents. Called Dollar-A-Day and patterned after the original in Denver, CO, the program was operated jointly for 5 years and today continues to operate under the auspices of the health department. Success of the venture is attributed to use of skills in assessment, building, managing, and evaluating, as described by Loxley (1997). These elements were used to construct a context for collaboration.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2000

Viral genome organizer: a system for analyzing complete viral genomes.

The viral genome organizer (VGO) is designed to simplify the characterization and annotation of complete viral genomes (particularly those of large poxviruses) and to help researchers discover new genes and detect gene fragmentation. VGO is based on Genotator [Harris, N.L., 1997. Genome Res. 7, 754-762], an annotation workbench designed for the analysis of eukaryotic genomic sequences. VGO automates a number of database search routines (FASTA, BLASTP, PSI-BLAST and TBLASTN), processes the results through a multiple-alignment viewer (MView; [Brown, N.P., Leroy, C., Sander, C. , 1998. Bioinformatics 14, 380-381]) and serves to manage the hundreds of DNA, protein and database search results files that must be organized when dealing with large complete poxviral genomes. It also directs the generation a self-dotplot of the genome by Dotter [Sonnhammer, E.L.L., Durbin, R., 1995. A dot-matrix program with dynamic threshold control suited for genomic DNA and protein sequence analysis. Gene 167: GC1-10. http://www.sanger.ac. uk/Software/Dotter/] to uncover repeated genes and sequences and provides Internet links to programs for generation of restriction maps and analysis of potential PCR primers. The user-friendly graphical interface displays DNA and protein sequences, links to search results, ORFs, stop-start codons, restriction sites and flags of database searches. Currently, VGO and associated programs run in an X-windows environment on commonly available UNIX machines.

Databases, Factual↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Fertility reduction and the quality of family planning services.

The purpose of this paper is to determine whether a focus on quality of family planning services is consistent with meeting demographic objectives. An analytical framework that links the six elements of quality with fertility is described. A review of existing literature and analysis suggest that improvements in quality of family planning services by enhancing the choice of contraceptive methods available in a country would increase the overall practice of contraception and thus would result in fertility reduction.

Contraception↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Sex education and family planning services for young adults: alternative urban strategies in Mexico.

In Mexico, youth face difficulties in obtaining reliable information on sex education and family planning through existing community programs. Two alternative strategies to provide these services are being tested in poor urban areas of Monterrey. In one experimental area, Integrated Youth Centers were established, which provide sex education and family planning services as well as counseling, academic tutoring, and recreational activities. In another area, trained young adults and community counselors work through informal networks to provide sex education and family planning information. Both utilization and the cost of these services are examined in the context of plans for expanding coverage in Mexico-U.S. border areas.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1997

Should governments subsidize the use of insecticide-impregnated mosquito nets in Africa? Implications of a cost-effectiveness analysis.

Recent large-scale field trials show that mosquito nets impregnated with insecticide can substantially reduce all-cause mortality in children in malaria-endemic areas in Africa. This paper considers the cost-effectiveness of impregnated nets, initially from the perspective of a government programme which would distribute nets free of charge and organize and fund re-impregnation on an annual basis. The calculations show that with the reductions in all-cause mortality observed in the trials, complete government subsidy of nets through a vertical programme would represent an efficient use of scarce resources for most combinations of assumptions. However, alternative ways of financing and organizing the use of impregnated nets are also possible and may be more cost-effective than vertical delivery. Distribution of nets and insecticide might be less costly than required for a vertical programme by integrating delivery with other types of government health programmes, with private sector delivery systems for other types of products, or with government systems developed for other sectors such as agriculture. Further, not all the costs need to be met by governments, as costs could be shared with donors, NGOs and the beneficiaries. The major conclusion is that impregnated nets would save a large number of lives in malaria endemic areas, they are an efficient use of scare resources, and ways of encouraging their use need to be developed and tested.

Africa↗
PubMed1975

Family planning services in the United States.

In recent years the United States has made considerable progress in providing family planning services for those in need. This does not mean, however, that the problems posed by unwanted pregnancies and unwanted births have been completely overcome. Estimates of the number of low-income women needing and receiving family planning services indicate that roughly 3.6 million women at risk of an unwanted pregnancy were receiving family planning services in 1973. This represented almost two-thirds of those in need at the time. Many programs are also seeking to meet the teenage need demonstrated by very high rates of out-of-wedlock births, premarital conceptions, obstetric problems, and legal abortion demands of women 15 to 19 years of age. As of 1973, it appeared that between 1.3 and 2.2 million never-married teenagers were in need of organized family planning services, and that of these, services were being received by between 25 and 42 per cent.

Abortion, Legal↗
PubMed1993

Influence of socioeconomic factors on attaining targets for reducing teenage pregnancies.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the rate of pregnancy and outcome in teenagers in areas of different socioeconomic conditions, and to assess the implication for achievement of government and local targets in reducing unwanted pregnancies in teenagers. DESIGN: Records of pregnancies were obtained from hospital discharge files and rates of live and still births and abortions calculated for each postcode sector. Postcodes were grouped by categories of deprivation and by local government district. SETTING: Tayside, Scotland. SUBJECTS: Teenage girls admitted to National Health Service hospitals for delivery or abortion in 1980-90. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Conception in girls aged under 16 by area of residence and relative proportion leading to live births or terminations. Rate of different outcomes in girls under the age of 20 by area of residence. RESULTS: The pregnancy rate in girls aged under 16 was three times as high, and in all girls under 20 six times as high in the most deprived areas as in the most affluent areas. The proportion of teenage pregnancies ending in abortions was higher in the affluent areas, where two out of three ended in abortion compared with one out of four in the deprived areas. CONCLUSIONS: Although there was a higher pregnancy rate in teenagers in more deprived areas, the proportion ending in abortion was greater in more affluent areas, possibly due to social and parental pressure. The wide geographical variation in patterns of teenage pregnancy indicates the need for a small area rather than a regional approach to setting targets and devising measures of achieving them.

Abortion, Legal↗
PubMed1980

Impact of the national family planning program on fertility in rural Korea: a multivariate areal analysis.

The impact of the previous three years' input of the national family planning program on 1975 fertility levels in rural Korea was assessed using multivariate areal analysis techniques. Program input had a measurable negative effect on fertility, but the magnitude of the effect was lower than that of nonprogram factors. Holding availability of nonprogram methods of fertility limitation constant strengthened the impact of program input. It was suggested that the effect of the national program was statistically obscured by the selective concentration of program input in high-fertility, physician-poor areas.

Adult↗