Guido G. Urizar

Impact of stress reduction instructions on stress and cortisol levels during pregnancy.

This pilot study examined whether giving stress reduction (SR) instructions to pregnant women would be effective in regulating stress, mood, and cortisol levels during pregnancy. Forty-one predominantly low-income Latina women, receiving prenatal services at a public county hospital, completed measures of stress and mood (depressive symptoms, positive and negative affect) and provided morning and evening saliva samples to measure cortisol prior to and after receiving SR instructions. We hypothesized that adherence to these SR instructions would result in lower levels of stress, negative mood states, and cortisol levels when compared to baseline values. Repeated measures ANOVA analyses demonstrated significantly lower levels of stress (P < 0.001), lower symptoms of depression and negative affect (P < 0.001), and lower levels of morning cortisol (P = 0.01) under the SR condition, compared to baseline. Health behaviors that were engaged in during the SR condition and implications for prenatal health interventions are discussed.

Examining a stress-coping model of burnout and depression in extension agents.

Occupational stressors, coping strategies, and burnout and depression were examined in extension agents. Results indicated that a significant proportion of extension agents (range = 9.8%-51%) reported burnout symptoms above established cut-off scores for the burnout subscales, but fewer than 3% of the sample reported significant symptoms on all 3 dimensions of burnout. Depressive symptoms based on established cut-off scores were noted in approximately 26% of the sample. Stepwise multiple regression indicated that extension agents who used an emotion-oriented coping strategy were more likely to (a) display high levels of depression, emotional exhaustion, and depersonalization and (b) exhibit low levels of personal accomplishment. Furthermore, task-oriented coping strategies were found to be negatively associated with the 3 dimensions of burnout. Implications for interventional programming to reduce the symptoms of burnout are discussed.

Psychosocial and cultural influences on cardiovascular health and quality of life among hispanic cardiac patients in south Florida

This study examined whether psychosocial and cultural factors were related to four dimensions of cardiac-related quality of life (global, physical, emotional, and social functioning) in 120 Hispanic coronary heart disease (CHD) outpatients in south Florida. Survey data were collected on sociodemographic (age, gender, socioeconomic status), psychosocial (depression, social support), and cultural factors (acculturation, familism, fatalism), and quality of life. Medical data on CHD severity (New York Heart Association class, time since diagnosis) were obtained from patients’ clinic records. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that women and patients with more severe CHD had poorer quality of life than men or patients with less severe CHD. Psychosocial and cultural factors were associated with poorer quality of life after controlling for sociodemographic and medical variables: Depression was associated with all four quality of life dimensions (p < .001); and fatalism (p < .05) was associated with lower social functioning in women. These findings identify Hispanic subgroups with poor cardiac-related quality of life that can benefit from special outreach.

Influence of Maternal Stress on Successful Participation in a Physical Activity Intervention: The IMPACT Project

ABSTRACT Few studies have examined the impact of motherhood on successful participation in physical activity (PA) interventions. The current study focused on mothers in the Increasing Motivation for Physical Activity or IMPACT study, which aimed to promote PA in sedentary, low-income, ethnically diverse women (74% Latina). The aim of this study was to determine whether certain maternal variables (e.g., number of children, number and intensity of maternal stressors) influenced successful participation in an 8-week, class-based, PA intervention. PA consisted of accumulating 30 minutes or more of moderate-intensity activities (e.g., walking) five or more days a week. Sixty-eight mothers (average age = 32 years) were assessed at baseline and 10 weeks. Paired comparison t-tests demonstrated a significant increase in PA-related energy expenditure from baseline to 10 weeks (p < 0.05). Furthermore, this increase in PA was significantly associated with a decrease in the number of maternal stressors reported over this time period (p < 0.01). Simultaneous regression analyses indicated that (1) having a higher number of maternal stressors at baseline was associated with lower class attendance (p ≤ 0.05) and (2) rating these maternal stressors (e.g., unable to control childrens behavior) as being more stressful at baseline was associated with lower levels of PA at 10 weeks (p ≤ 0.01), independent of the number of children at home. These results suggest that the number and intensity of perceived maternal stressors may negatively impact attempts to become more physically active. Interventions should address such stressors.

Ten-year changes in cancer-related health behaviors and screening practices among Latino women and men in California.

Objective . This study examines changes in cancer-related health behaviors and risk factors (overweight/obesity, unhealthy diet, high alcohol use, and smoking), and screening practices related to cervical, breast, and colorectal cancer among Latinos of predominantly Mexican origin in Monterey County, California. Design . Data is from two cross-sectional surveys, conducted in 1990 and 2000, that included 919 women and 774 men from a community sample, and 276 men from an agricultural labor camp sample (ages 18–64). Results . Over the 10-year period, the prevalence of obesity increased by 48% among community women, 47% among community men, and 91% among labor camp men. Although consumption of fruits and vegetables remained low and consumption of fried foods remained high, other diet-related behaviors showed significant improvements (e.g. milk consumption shifted from whole-fat to lower-fat among women from the community and men from the labor camps, use of lard or meat fat when cooking decreased among women and men from the community). In addition, alcohol intake decreased among men from both samples, as did smoking among labor camp men. There were large improvements for annual pap and mammography screening (increases from 53 to 71% for pap testing, and from 15 to 53% for mammography screening) but annual blood stool testing remained infrequent and unchanged. Conclusion . These findings highlight the need for interventions and policies that improve knowledge, preventive care, and social environments to sustain improvements and address areas of special need in cancer prevention for Latinos, especially related to obesity and colorectal screening.

Extending Psychometric Norms for Pre-Cardiac Transplantation Evaluations: The Florida Cohort, 1990–1996

Multidisciplinary pre-cardiac transplantation evaluations determine an individuals ability to benefit from potential transplantation. Psychologists are routinely consulted to perform psychological evaluations and testing to examine the candidates current functioning and to forecast future functioning in the event of transplantation. The establishment of appropriate norms for psychological tests is an ethical imperative to provide high quality psychological consultations that maximize the utility of information gathered. The purpose of this paper is to present pre-cardiac transplant norms for a battery of psychological tests in a large population of consecutive transplant candidates. Together with other recently published norms on alternative test batteries, these norms allow the transplant psychologist to select from a range of psychological tests that span multiple domains of critical importance including the affective, behavioral, coping, cognitive, and health related quality of life domains. These norms appear to set a standard of practice for the use of psychological tests by a consulting transplantation psychologist.

AIDS Knowledge among Latinos: Findings from a Community and Agricultural Labor Camp Survey

The authors assessed knowledge about AIDS and its modes of transmission in Latino adults from northern California via a survey administered in 2000 to 461 women and 356 men from a community sample and 188 men from a labor camp sample. The majority of respondents viewed AIDS as a serious problem in their community. Knowledge about how AIDS is transmitted varied from accurate beliefs about the virus being transmitted by biomedical modes to inaccurate beliefs about its transmittal through casual contact. A multiple regression analysis identified three groups with the highest misconceptions about AIDS transmission: Latinos with low educational attainment, particularly men from labor camps; Latinos who were the oldest in the sample (40 to 64 years of age); and Latinos with low educational attainment who had not visited a doctor recently. These findings identify groups with high misconceptions about AIDS who will benefit from special outreach and education.