Health Findings

Healthy food sales rise near register

Placing healthy foods near grocery store checkout registers can boost their sales, a study in August’s PLOS Medicine finds.

Researchers at the University of Southampton in England partnered with a popular supermarket chain in Iceland to conduct the study. The stores periodically replaced calorie-dense, sugary foods at checkouts and nearby aisles with water and produce. Sales rose for whichever items were placed in the easy-to-grab locations.

Researchers concluded that placing healthy foods at checkouts and nearby aisles may help lead to healthier diets for shoppers, and that health officials might consider advocating for produce to be sold near supermarket entrances.

“The findings of our study suggest that a healthier store layout could lead to nearly 10,000 extra portions of fruit and vegetables and approximately 1,500 fewer portions of confectionery being sold on a weekly basis in each store,” Christina Vogel, PhD, a public health nutritionist and principal research fellow at Southampton’s MRC Lifecourse Epidemiology Unit, said in a news release.

Better patient safety and quality improvement can help reduce health risks for Hispanic and Black newborns, a study says.

Photo by Amorn Suriyan, courtesy iStockphoto

More complications for minority infants

Black and Hispanic newborns have higher complication risks compared to white and Asian infants, a study in the August issue of Pediatrics finds.

Mount Sinai Hospital researchers examined New York City records at 40 hospitals between 2010 and 2014. They examined over 480,000 pregnancies in which a fetus was carried to at least 37 weeks, finding the average number of unexpected newborn complications were 48 per 1,000 births.

Complications, which can include neurologic damage, severe respiratory problems or death, were higher for Black and Hispanic babies. Records showed 72 complications per 1,000 births for Black infants, and 54 complications per 1,000 for Hispanic infants. When compared to white infants, Black infants were roughly twice as likely and Hispanic infants about 1.5 times as likely to experience a complication.

Researchers also used the data to rank the hospitals where women gave birth on their quality of care. They found that Black and Hispanic women predominantly gave birth in hospitals ranked as having low-quality care.

“By identifying disparities among otherwise healthy, low-risk infants, we emphasize patient safety and quality improvement — targeting routine obstetric and neonatal care — as a critical but underutilized approach to disparity reduction,” senior investigator Kimberly Glazer, PhD, MPH, assistant professor of population health science and policy at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital, said in a news release.

Air unhealthy even within standards

Even when air pollution levels fall within national standards, they can be dangerous to human health, a study in September issue of The BMJ finds.

Led by the Institute for Risk Assessment Sciences at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, researchers examined health data of over 325,000 people from six European countries beginning in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The countries were Sweden, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Germany and Austria. More than 47,000 participants died during the 20-year study period.

Of those who died, nearly 30% experienced long-term exposure to particulate matter below the U.S. standard accepted as safe. And nearly 10% of deaths were among people with long-term exposure to nitrogen dioxide at levels far below those allowed by the European Union standard. Both exposures were also below the World Health Organization standards for air pollution.

Researchers found that most people who died during the study period were more likely to have had long-term exposure to particulate matter, nitrogen oxide and black carbon when compared to those who did not die within the study period. And in a majority of cases, those exposures were below established standards.

“Our study contributes to the evidence that outdoor air pollution is associated with mortality even at low pollution levels below the current European and North American standards and WHO guideline values,” the researchers said. “These findings are therefore an important contribution to the debate about revision of air quality limits, guidelines and standards, and future assessments by the Global Burden of Disease.”

Public can debunk social media falsities

Laypeople do as well as professional fact-checkers in determining the truth of news stories appearing on social media and can play a role in debunking mistruths, a study in September’s Science Advances finds.

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology selected over 200 news articles that were posted on Facebook. They enlisted over 1,100 people not trained as fact-checkers to judge if information in the stories was factual. Meanwhile, three professional fact-checkers also analyzed the articles. Stories deemed factual by both groups were closely aligned when viewed overall. The researchers praised what they called the “wisdom of the crowds.”

The study shows that groups of about 12 to 20 laypeople can make judgments on a story’s factualness that come close or match those of experts in a field. Laypeople are quicker with their judgment than fact-checkers, researchers found.

The researchers said that given the massive amount of misinformation on social media, members of the general public could be used to sift through content, thereby avoiding the higher cost of employing professional fact-checkers and the lengthy time they take to do their job thoroughly.

Prohibiting teenage drivers from driving with passengers at night saves lives.

Photo courtesy Antonio_Diaz, iStockphoto

Teenage driving rule reduces night crashes

Banning first-year teenage drivers from carrying passengers at night can significantly reduce car crashes and deaths, a recent working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research finds.

Researchers analyzed data following a 2007 policy in New South Wales, Australia, that banned first-year drivers under the age of 21 from carrying passengers between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m. Researchers examined traffic, hospital and death records between 2004 and 2014, comparing data before and after the policy took effect.

The researchers estimated that the policy has reduced late-night crashes with multiple passengers among first-year drivers by 54% and associated fatalities by 75%. They estimated that each year since implementation, the restriction has prevented 32 people from receiving minor injuries, 12 people from being hospitalized and at least three people from being killed.

While other policies impacting teenage drivers have failed to show long-term behavioral change, the new study suggested teen driving improved after the first year, the researchers said.

“We find significant reductions in nighttime multi-passenger crashes in the second and third years of driving,” Tim Moore, PhD, a co-author of the paper, said in a news release.