Assessment of dietary intake among Moroccan women and Surinam men

Objective. To establish a method for food consumption data collection in ethnic groups in the Netherlands. Methods. Two pilot studies have been carried out, one among Moroccan women and one among Surinam men. First, focus group discussions were held to obtain background information from members of the target population. For food consumption...

The use of focus groups in the development of the KIDSCREEN HRQL questionnaire

There is increasing interest in the public health sector in the health-related quality of life (HRQL) of healthy children. However, most HRQL instruments are developed for children with a chronic illness. In addition, existing questionnaires are mostly based on expert opinion about what constitutes HRQL and the opinions and views of healthy...

Internet-based self-management offers an opportunity to achieve better asthma control in adolescent

Background: Internet and short message service are emerging tools for chronic disease management in adolescents, but few data exist on the barriers to and benefits of internet-based asthma self-management. Our objective was to reveal the barriers and benefits perceived by adolescents with well-controlled and poorly controlled asthma to current...

Information and informed consent for neonatal screening: Opinions and preferences of parents

Background: The current neonatal screening program ("the heel prick") involves taking a few drops of blood from almost every newborn in the Netherlands to determine whether the child is suffering from one of three congenital disorders: phenylketonuria, congenital hypothyroid, or adrenogenital syndrome. This study investigated the preferences and...

Development of a workplace intervention for sick-listed employees with stress-related mental disorders: Intervention Mapping as a useful tool

Background. To date, mental health problems and mental workload have been increasingly related to long-term sick leave and disability. However, there is, as yet, no structured protocol available for the identification and application of an intervention for stress-related mental health problems at the workplace. This paper describes the...

Parental opinions about the expansion of the neonatal screening programme

Background: Advances in genomics will open up opportunities in the fields of genetic testing, early diagnosis and disease treatment. While neonatal screening is the field of application par excellencefor these developments, the debate on its potential benefits and drawbacks is mainly theoretically driven and based on the opinions of...

MP3 Players and Hearing Loss: Adolescents' Perceptions of Loud Music and Hearing Conservation

Objective: To explore adolescents' behaviors and opinions about exposure to loud music from MP3 players. Study design: We conducted a qualitative analysis of focus-group discussions with adolescents aged 12 to 18 years from 2 large secondary schools (1 urban and 1 rural) for pre-vocational and pre-university education. The semi-structured...

Women's positions during the second stage of labour: Views of primary care midwives

Aim. This paper is a report of a study to explore the views of midwives on women's positions during the second stage of labour. Background. Many authors recommend encouraging women to use positions that are most comfortable to them. Others advocate encouragement of non-supine positions, because offering 'choice' is not enough to reverse the...

Asthma beliefs among mothers and children from different ethnic origins living in Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Background. Doctors and patients hold varying beliefs concerning illness and treatment. Patients' and families' explanatory models (EMs) vary according to personality and sociocultural factors. In a multi-ethnic society, it is becoming increasingly significant that doctors understand the different beliefs of their patients in order to improve...

Medico-legal reasoning in disability assessment: A focus group and validation study

Background. Decisions on disability pensions are based, among others, on medical reports. The way these medical assessments are performed is largely unclear. The aim of the study was to determine which grounds are used by social insurance physicians (SIPs) in these assessments and to determine if the identification of these grounds can help...