Ronald D. Williams

Public health advocacy and chiropractic: a guide to helping your community reach its health objectives

OBJECTIVE Doctors of chiropractic (DCs) provide health educational and promotion efforts in the communities they serve by counseling patients at the individual level. This article outlines a method and model in which DCs can effectively serve as public health advocates within their community. DISCUSSION The social ecological model of health education and health promotion serves as an excellent template for taking into account every antecedent to disease within a community and how to prevent it through health promotion. A step-by-step guide to getting the DC involved in the community can be centered on this model, with the DC serving as a health advocate for his or her community. Resources are provided to assist in this process. CONCLUSION The DC can and should engage his or her community in areas that are conducive to health through involvement and advocacy roles where these are suitable. A communitys health can be enhanced with greater health care provider involvement, and DCs need to consider themselves a part of this process.

A proposed protocol for hand and table sanitizing in chiropractic clinics and education institutions

OBJECTIVE By nature, chiropractic is a hands-on profession using manipulation applied to the joints with direct skin-to-skin contacts. Chiropractic tables are designed with a face piece to accommodate the prone patients head in a neutral position and hand rests to allow for relaxed shoulders and upper spine so treatment is facilitated. The purpose of this article is to present a proposed guideline for hand and treatment table surface sanitizing for the chiropractic profession that is evidence-based and can easily be adopted by teaching institutions and doctors in the field. METHODS A review of the chiropractic literature demonstrated that pathogenic microbes are present on treatment tables in teaching clinics at multiple facilities, yet no standardized protocols exist in the United States regarding table sanitizing and hand hygiene in chiropractic clinics or education institutions. This article reviews the scientific literature on the subject by using several search engines, databases, and specific reviews of documents pertaining to the topic including existing general guidelines. RESULTS The literature has several existing guidelines that the authors used to develop a proposed protocol for hand and table sanitizing specific to the chiropractic profession. Recommendations were developed and are presented on hand hygiene and table sanitizing procedures that could lower the risk of infection for both clinical personnel and patients in chiropractic facilities. CONCLUSION This article offers a protocol for hand and table sanitizing in chiropractic clinics and education institutions. The chiropractic profession should consider adoption of these or similar measures and disseminate them to teaching clinics, institutions, and private practitioners.

Response to: Commentary to “Dietary Supplement Use by Children and Adolescents in the United States to Enhance Sport Performance: Results of the National Health Interview Survey”

To the Editor, It is with pleasure that we respond to the commentary by Drs. MacKay and Wallace on our paper related to supplement use in US. children and adolescents and sport performance. First, our paper was an assessment of a national data set that is representative of the United States (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2007). The information derived from those data suggests that approximately 1.2 million children and adolescents may be taking anything from a simple vitamin supplement to an herbal combination or creatine. We found that to be of interest so we reported on what children and adolescents were doing based on the survey and what the current literature states about this use. MacKay and Wallace state that we ‘‘confuse responsible use of supplements to support nutrient [in]adequacy in adolescence with supplementation intended to gain a competitive edge’’; however, we disagree with this statement. In fact, the explicit purpose of our study was to ‘‘assess self-reported or parental reported dietary supplement use to enhance sport performance among the child subset of the National Health Interview Survey’’ (Evans, Ndetan, Perko, Williams, & Walker, 2012, p. 3). The main outcome of the study was that ‘‘[m]ost (94.5 %) [of the sample] who reported using supplements (for sport performance) used multivitamin and/or mineral combinations followed by fish oil/omega-3s, creatine, and fiber’’ (p. 3). While it is true that most kids do not use supplements to enhance sport performance, our aim in this study was to assess those who reported that they did. In addition, while children may be using multivitamins and older adolescents using creatine, we are unable to determine this from the sample and do not attempt to analyze the data at that level. Our paper is about the general use of supplementation specifically for sport performance. In addition, in our paper, we This comment refers to the article available at doi:10.1007/s10935-012-0285-9.