by Negasa Eshete Soboksa and Getachow Nenko Yimam
Original Research
Background: Provision of good and consistence sanitation practice plays an essential role in protecting human health to prevent communicable diseases. The aim of this study was to assess household level sanitation practice of mothers’ and associated factors in Gedeo Zone, South Ethiopia. Methods: Community based cross-sectional study design was conducted in Gedeo Zone, South Ethiopia. 634 systematically selected mothers were included in the study. Data was collected using structured questionnaire and entered into SPSS version 20.0 for analysis. Descriptive statistics were computed and logistic regression model was used to identify factors associated with outcome variable. Result: In the study only about 12.5% mothers were good sanitation practice. Majority of the mothers’ in the households, (68%) had shared toilet facility and almost all were simple traditional pit without a slab. From those mothers’ in the households with toilet facility, hand washing practices after critical period was reported to be 44.2%. Current study revealed that ethnicity, presence of hand washing near the latrine, source and protection of source of water supply had shown significant association. Conclusion: sanitation practice by mothers at household level in the study area was low. So health workers must pay special attention to improve this problem.
American Journal of Public Health Research. 2017, 5(2), 43-49. DOI: 10.12691/ajphr-5-2-3
Pub. Date: June 08, 2017
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by Mary Ann Evans, Vivian Siu, Krista Markwardt and Sarah Hargand
Original Research
Self-reported payer data from the birth certificate is frequently used to identify Medicaid births, but evaluation of validity and reliability is lacking due to the challenges of gaining access to Medicaid data and data complexity. Oregon birth certificate and Medicaid paid claims were linked and compared to assess the validity and reliability of birth certificate reported payer data. Birth certificate data underestimated Medicaid paid births and underestimation grew from 18% in 2008 to 25% by 2014. Birth certificate data had moderate to substantial agreement with Medicaid claims, but reliability declined over time from a Kappa score of .82 to .75. Reliability was substantially lower for younger, less educated, Hispanic, American Indian or Alaskan Native (AIAN), Black or African American (BAA), and Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander (NHPI) women. Specificity and positive predictive value were above 90% over time and by age, ethnicity, race and education. Sensitivity and negative predictive values declined from 84% and 87% in 2008 to 78% in 2014 and were lower than specificity and positive predictive values. Sensitivity values were higher for younger, less educated, Hispanic, AIAN, BAA and NHPI women. Negative predictive values were lower for younger, less educated, Hispanic, AIAN, BAA and NHPI women. The results document the limitations of birth certificate and strengths of Medicaid data for counting Medicaid paid births and allocating resources for community programs.
American Journal of Public Health Research. 2017, 5(2), 36-42. DOI: 10.12691/ajphr-5-2-2
Pub. Date: May 16, 2017
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by Hassan Tahir, Nagadarshini Ramagiri Vinod, Vistasp Daruwalla, Muhammad Umair Malik, Nikath Zeeshan, Lavanya Vuppu, Thomas Simunich and Medha Joshi
Original Research
Background: Medication reconciliation is the process of comparing a patient's medication orders to all of the medications that the patient has been taking. Unfortunately, medication errors are common in our health system accounting for significant proportion of patient harm. The main objective of our study was to explore the effect of self-designed intervention in improving the accuracy of patient current medication list in the outpatient settings. Methods: The study designed entailed collection of data from October 2013 to March 2014. The data collected in October (The pre-intervention) was compared to the post-intervention data in March 2014. Following interventions were performed: Education of residents, nurses and patients, frequent reminders to the residents to perform medication reconciliation, sending notifications to the residents who failed to perform medication reconciliation, reminding the patients get all refills at the time of appointment and reminding the patients to bring pill bottles at each appointment. The pre-intervention data was compared with the post-intervention data for different types of medication errors. Normality of the variables was pre assessed. Non-parametric analysis using Fisher’s exact test was performed for comparison of categorical variables. Conclusion: In conclusion, our intervention improved the accuracy of patient current medication list in the electronic records as accurate as possible. For clinics and hospitals, medication reconciliation can enhance delivery of high value cost conscious care to the patients by reducing medication errors.
American Journal of Public Health Research. 2017, 5(2), 30-35. DOI: 10.12691/ajphr-5-2-1
Pub. Date: April 28, 2017
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