Harms from a partner's drinking: an international study on adverse effects and reduced quality of life for women.

BACKGROUND: Partners of heavy drinking individuals can be detrimentally affected as a result of their partner's drinking. OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to identify the proportion of heterosexual intimate partner relationships with a heavy drinking male that resulted in reported alcohol-related harm and to investigate the impact of this on well-being in 9 countries. METHODS: This study used survey data from the Gender and Alcohol's Harm to Others (GENAHTO) Project on Alcohol's Harm to Others in 9 countries (10,613 female respondents, 7,091 with intimate live-in partners). Respondents were asked if their partners drinking had negatively affected them as well as questions on depression, anxiety, and satisfaction with life. RESULTS: The proportion of partnered respondents that reported having a harmful heavy drinking partner varied across countries, from 4% in Nigeria and the US to 33% in Vietnam. The most consistent correlate of experiencing harm was being oneself a heavy episodic drinker, most likely as a proxy measure for the acceptability of alcohol consumption in social circles. Women with a harmful heavy drinking partner reported significantly lower mean satisfaction with life than those with a partner that did not drink heavily. CONCLUSIONS: Harms to women from heavy drinking intimate partners appear across a range of subgroups and impact on a wide range of women, at least demographically speaking. Women living with a heavy drinking spouse experience higher levels of anxiety and depression symptoms and lower satisfaction with life.

Associations between alcohol related hospital admissions and alcohol consumption in Victoria: influence of socio-demographic factors.

OBJECTIVE: To examine the cross-sectional ecologic associations between apparent per-capita alcohol consumption, alcohol-related hospital admission rates, and the distributions of socio-demographic factors for people residing in 76 Local Government Areas (LGAs) in Victoria, during the 1995-1996 fiscal year. METHOD: Visitor-adjusted per-capita alcohol consumption was obtained from wholesale sales data from the Liquor Licensing Commission Victoria. Alcohol-related hospital admission rates were extracted from the Victorian Inpatient Minimum Dataset, and adjusted by the appropriate aetiologic fractions. Summary socio-demographic measures were derived from the 1996 Census. Their associations were analysed using multiple linear regression. RESULTS: Per-capita alcohol consumption ranged from 4 to 14 litres absolute alcohol/year and alcohol-related hospital admission rates ranged from 5 to 25 per 10,000 residents/year (external-cause diagnoses) and 8-37 per 10,000 residents/year (disease diagnoses). Higher levels of per-capita consumption were associated with higher admission rates (r = 0.45 for external cause diagnoses, r = 0.66 for disease diagnoses, and r = 0.70 for all diagnoses), each per-capita increase of one litre/year corresponding to increased admission rates of 0.6, 1.5 and 2.1 per 10,000 person-years, respectively. Further adjustments by summary socio-demographic measures reduced, but did not modify, the associations between per-capita consumption and admission rates. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: Summary measures of sales-based per-capita alcohol consumption and socio-demographic environments may provide useful indicators of alcohol-related morbidity in Victorian communities.

Workforce predictions: a situational analysis and critique of the World Health Organisation model.

The FDI/WHO JWG6 Computer Program is a needs-based, demand-weighted method of workforce prediction. Using this program and recent Victorian epidemiological data the objectives of the investigation were: to calculate the current state of community need for dental services and personnel in the State of Victoria; to forecast community service and personnel needs for the years 2000 and 2020; and to report qualitatively on the program's value as a workforce planning tool. High, low and moderate estimates of workforce requirements for the year 1988 were obtained by modifying certain variables related to needs/demands. The moderate estimate was used to calculate the number of operators needed within the population, and this demonstrated a required operator to population ratio of 1:2,019. Results for the year 2000 predicted the operator to population ratio required in Victoria will be 1:1,988 and for the year 2020, 1:2,165. Conclusions concerning the WHO program are firstly that it suggests a present under-supply of oral health care providers which is likely to increase by the year 2020 and secondly that it is a useful tool for workforce planning and monitoring.

Dental caries amongst Royal Australian Navy recruits, 1988.

A sample of 1100 Royal Australian recruits were examined for dental caries in 1988. Socio-demographic data were also collected. The mean DMFT scores were 4.33, 6.85, and 8.87 teeth for the 15-19 year-olds, 20-24 year-olds, and 25-29 year-olds, respectively. Caries experience varied between the state of origin of recruitment with Victorian and Queensland subjects having the highest DMFT scores, and Tasmanian subjects, the lowest. Comparison with previous military studies indicated not only a decreased dental caries experience, but also that restoration of teeth rather than extraction is a more likely treatment outcome of dental caries in recent recruits.

Women's views of different models of antenatal care in Victoria, Australia.

BACKGROUND: This study assessed women's views of care in pregnancy, contrasting the experiences and satisfaction of women using different models of care in Victoria, Australia. METHODS: A statewide postal survey of women who gave birth during a 2-week period in 1993 was carried out 6 to 7 months after birth. RESULTS: Of 1336 women, 62.5 percent responded, and of these, 62.4 percent rated their antenatal care as very good, 27.7 percent as good, 8.2 percent as mixed, and 1.8 percent as poor or very poor. Although social factors, obstetric factors, and model of care had significant associations with satisfaction in univariate analyses, only model of care, mother's country of birth, and medical risk remained significant in a multivariate analysis using logistic regression. Women were most likely to be satisfied when antenatal care was provided by an obstetrician in private practice or a birth center. When comparisons were restricted to options available to women without private health insurance, using public hospital clinics as the baseline in a multivariate analysis, women were significantly more likely to be satisfied with birth center care, and significantly less likely to be satisfied with shared care. Contributing factors were waiting times, staff seeming rushed, and lack of continuity of caregiver. CONCLUSION: The expansion of shared antenatal care has not succeeded in improving satisfaction with antenatal care for women in the public health care sector.