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New federal diet guidelines follow the evidence

February 17, 2011 By 2 Comments

Here at EBL, we’ve discussed how difficult it is to figure out what nutrition advice to follow, especially when there’s so much health and nutrition advice in the media that refers to anecdotes and simplistic inferences from single studies.

For those looking for real evidence about what to eat, there’s some good news.  The federal government has issued new dietary guidelines based on an extensive evidence-based review.

The U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services appointed 13 nationally-recognized experts in nutrition and health to review the scientific literature on how nutrition impacts health and disease prevention.

The experts worked with a new resource – USDA’s Nutrition Evidence Library, a clearinghouse of systematic reviews designed to inform federal nutrition policy. (You can read more about the process the panel used to create the new nutrition guidelines by clicking here.) The library employs post-graduate level researchers with experience in nutrition or public health to build its content.  The researchers analyze peer-reviewed articles to build bodies of evidence, develop conclusion statements and describe research recommendations.  It’s an EBL dream! 

So what do the new guidelines recommend? 

The entire report from the committee of experts is more than 400 pages long, with specific advice on everything from energy balances to food safety.  Government officials distilled this report into 112 pages of dietary guidelines, and 23 recommendations for the general population. Among them are:

  • Focus on consuming nutrient-dense foods and beverages.
  • Reduce daily sodium intake to less than 2,300 milligrams (about 1 teaspoon).
  • Limit the consumption of foods that contain refined grains, especially refined grain foods that contain solid fats, added sugars and sodium.
  • Eat a variety of vegetables, especially dark-green and red and orange vegetables, and beans and peas.
  • Consume at least half of all grains as whole grains. Increase whole-grain intake by replacing refined grains with whole grains.
  • Increase the amount and variety of seafood consumed by choosing seafood in place of some meat and poultry.

As you can imagine, the EBL team is thrilled that the government is using systematic reviews to make national diet recommendations.  They’re worth reading to see if you can improve your own diet.  Even small changes can make a big difference when you consider the evidence.

Filed Under: Evidence-Based Living, Health and Wellness, policy, The Learning Center Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Do gun control laws prevent violence?

January 31, 2011 By 10 Comments

Gun control laws are in the media spotlight once again in the wake of the Arizona shooting that killed six people and injured 13 including U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.  Already, the Arizona Legislature has introduced two new bills that would loosen gun controls on college campuses. But what do we really know about gun control laws?  Is there evidence that they reduce violence?

As unsatisfying as it sounds, the answer is that we just don’t know.  One of the only systematic reviews available on this topic was published by the Community Guide, a resource at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control for evidence-based recommendations on improving public health.  It reviewed more than 40 studies on gun control laws ranging from bans to restrictions to waiting periods.  (You can read a summary of the report here.)

The conclusion:  “The evidence available from identified studies was insufficient to determine the effectiveness of any of the firearms laws reviewed singly or in combination.” 

Essentially, the review concludes that there is a lack of high-quality studies that evaluate specific gun control laws.  One challenge is that information about guns and who owns them is limited to protect the privacy of firearms owners.

So what do we know about firearms in the U.S.?

We know that firearms are present in about one-third of U.S. households, and that there are handguns in about half of those homes.

We also have a National Violent Death Reporting System, which collects information from death certificates, medical examiner reports and police reports in 19 states. According to the reporting system, 66 percent of all murders and 51 percent of suicides are committed with guns.  But that doesn’t tell us much – like whether the murders and suicides would occur by other means or, given stricter gun control laws, whether the perpetrators would find a way to obtain guns illegally.

The bottom line is that researchers and government officials need to step up to conduct more research and find a proven way to prevent gun violence from taking the lives of innocent citizens.

Filed Under: Evidence-Based Living, In The Media, policy Tagged With: , , , , ,

Video feature: Psyche 101 with Professor Stephen Ceci

January 26, 2011 By Leave a Comment

To follow-up our post on Professor Stephen Ceci’s work on child testimony, we thought it would be useful to share a recent lecture Ceci gave to a Psychology 101 class at Cornell. 

In the lecture, he discusses five factors that can damage or change a child memory: 

  • Suggestive questioning.
  • Giving false expectations or stereotypes.
  • Confirmatory bias, or tendency for people to favor information that confirms their preconceptions.
  • Visually-guided imagery.
  • High levels of stress

“How can children come to believe something that’s wrong?” Ceci asked.

“When young children, ages 3 and 4, are questioned by neutral interviewers, they do very well. They recall events with 90 percent accuracy,” he explains. “However, when children are repeatedly interviewed over the course of weeks and months with misleading suggestions ­ which sometimes occurs in forensic cases ­ many come to remember the false events as true and provide detailed and coherent narratives about these false events.  So compelling did the children’s narratives appear that we suspected that some of the children had come to truly believe they had experienced the fictitious events. Neither parents nor researchers were able to convince 27 percent of the children that the events never happened.”

You can view the entire lecture by clicking here.

Filed Under: Evidence-Based Living, policy, The Learning Center, Youth Development Tagged With: , , ,

The beginning of the end: The demise of cooperative extension in Canada

January 20, 2011 By 4 Comments

Cooperative Extension in the United States is a flagship program for connecting public “land-grant” universities to the general public. The goal of the Cooperative Extension System is to move knowledge created by researchers to groups who need it. A major audience has historically been agriculture, but other program areas deal with nutrition, child development, families, the environment and a variety of other issues.

I’ve worked as a faculty member in the Cooperative Extension program for 20 years, and I deeply admire the system. Like everyone with Extension responsibilities, I’ve been watching the changes that are going on nationally and at the state level. So I took notice of a very important cautionary note from our neighbors in Canada.

Writing in the Journal of Extension, Lee-Anne Milburn, Susan Mulley, and Carol Kline document the demise of agricultural extension in the province of Ontario. Their article, “The End of the Beginning and the Beginning of the End: The Decline of Public Agricultural Extension in Ontario,” shows how by the year 2000, “Extension in Ontario was moribund.”

How did this happen? According to Milburn and colleagues, some reasons are:

  • The decline of people involved in farming; fewer than 2% of Canada’s population are now involved in agriculture.
  • The decline in the agricultural sector in turn reduced political support for extension. Population changes “make agriculture less politically relevant and therefore create difficulties in accessing necessary funding for agricultural research and Extension.”
  • A key point: Extension was unable to document economic benefits; without clear “return on investment,” the government was unwilling to fund it.
  • Farmers now have access to many other information sources, making the Extension agent more of a “peer information consultant,” helping the farmer to access information rather than being seen as the source of expertise.
  • Universities focus increasingly on scholarship; in the words of the authors this relegates “Extension to the academic hinterland of ‘service and outreach.’”

It’s clear that these issues confront Cooperative Extension in the United States. Fortunately, the authors have some suggestions for what people involved in Extension should do:

  • Respond to the needs of rural non-farm residents. They point out that there are all kinds of issues in rural life Extension could respond to, like wetland and woodlot management, sustainable economic development, and conservation and stewardship.
  • Recognize that Extension programs have a life cycle and redirect resources away from failing or outdated programs.
  • Make creative use of new information technologies.
  • And a very interesting point: They suggest that reducing Extension field staff can be a mistake, and replacing one-on-one contact with consumers “is a recipe for decline.” They recommend in-person training and discussions rather than fact sheets and web-based information alone.

All food for thought as we enter a new era in Cooperative Extension!

 

 

Filed Under: Cornell Cooperative Extension, Evidence-Based Living, policy Tagged With: , , ,

Video Feature: How the physical environment affects children

January 12, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Here at Evidence-Based Living, we’ve written before about the research of Gary Evans, a Cornell professor in the Department of Design and Environmental Analysis who has spent much of his career researching how the physical environment impacts child well-being – especially for children in poverty.

Evans, an environmental psychologist, has completed a large body of research that examines the relationship of crowding, noise, housing and neighborhood quality on the lives of children.  His research reveals that these factors can have a lot of impact on a child’s academic achievement, as well as cognitive and social development.

Last year, Human Ecology undergraduate student Kyler Wilkins earned a first place finish in the College of Human Ecology’s 2010 Elsie Van Buren Rice Awards public speaking competition for his presentation of Evans research entitled “The Hard Knock Life: The Environment of Poverty and Children’s Development.”  In it, Wilkins describes how Evans research is being used by policy-makers to improve children’s access to healthy foods in schools and conduct cognitive interventions in to improve the memories of children in poverty. You can see it here:

To learn more about Evans’s work, you can also view a one-hour lecture he delivered to extension professionals by clicking here.

Filed Under: Cornell Cooperative Extension, Evidence-Based Living, Health and Wellness, policy, The Learning Center, Youth Development Tagged With: , , , , ,

Evidence-based health reform: Sometimes research really does matter!

December 31, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Sometimes, people committed to evidence-based approaches and to the translation of research findings into practice can feel a bit down. Research findings seem to move into real-world settings at a glacial pace, and policy makers and the general public can seem dismissive of the empirical evidence.

So it’s very encouraging to note that the Health Reform bill was explicitly based on scientific findings from health services research. The Academy Health website features a special session from the 2010 AcademyHealth Annual Research Meeting that looked at how health services research helped inform Congressional health reform discussions. Experts report on how such research influenced design decisions about health insurance, payment and delivery systems.

Despite controversy about the health reform bill, you have to hand it to those who crafted it for taking research evidence seriously.

Filed Under: Evidence-Based Living, Health and Wellness, policy

Science in the courtroom: A Cornell professor uncovers the facts behind child testimony

December 2, 2010 By 1 Comment

I received a postcard in the mail last week notifying me I was called for jury duty.  The prospect seemed an inconvenience. (Where would I find care for my two-year-old son while serving?). But it was also exciting!

I’ve always been interested in the law, and the idea of serving on a jury conjured up a feeling of civic responsibility that felt good.  It was a job I wanted to take seriously, and I immediately began wondering if there was any research I should consider before embarking on this important task.

Unfortunately, there were no trials in my town this week, so I didn’t even have to report to the court. But the notice did bring to mind the work of Cornell Professor Stephen Ceci, an expert in developmental psychology who has conducted ground-breaking research on the testimony of children.

Ceci’s work bridges the gap between research and real-life in a very tangible way: findings from his studies have influenced the way thousands of law enforcement officers, social workers, lawyers, and judges deal with the testimony of children. This is research that makes a tangible difference in the lives of people who often find themselves in difficult situations.

 (An interesting side note: Ceci refuses to be an expert witness for either prosecutors or defenders – a decision that has lent him credibility among judges throughout North America, who often cite his work in their decisions.)

A main topic of Ceci’s work is how children respond when they are questions about sexual abuse. The conventional wisdom says that children delay reporting abuse for years and will initially deny any abuse occurred when asked directly. But after repeated questioning, they gradually begin to tell little bits and pieces about how they were abused. Next, they recant altogether. Only later, when they are in what is perceived to be a psychologically safe situation, do they give a full and elaborate disclosure.

In analyses of dozens of published studies, Ceci and his colleagues separated out the methodologically-sound studies on children’s disclosure from poorly conducted ones. They found in high-quality studies, children did report abuse in full detail when explicitly asked. They also found that when a child is questioned repeatedly, he is likely to relent and say what he thinks the interviewer wants to hear to get out of an uncomfortable situation.

“It’s important for judges to know what science shows, because this set of invalid beliefs animates the whole investigatory process,” Ceci explained. “It motivates investigators and interviewers to pursue reluctant children, who may be reluctant because nothing actually happened.”

In the case U.S. v. Desmond Rouse, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit (the court directly beneath the U.S. Supreme Court) established new law on vetting child testimony based almost exclusively on the work of Ceci and his colleagues.

For anyone who works with children involved in the court system, Ceci’s work provides a whole new way to think about their testimony.

Filed Under: Evidence-Based Living, In The Media, policy, The Learning Center, Youth Development Tagged With: , , , ,

When every drop counts: The facts on public health during a drought

November 5, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Throughout the history of the Earth, droughts spanning seasons or even years have taken their toll on plant and animal life.  In more recent U.S. history, a series of major droughts every 20 to 30 years have devastated farms, sparked wildfires and led to adverse health effects.

Although the literature contains well-researched articles on the aspects and implications of drought itself, there have been few fact-based inquiries into how drought affects public health in the United States. Until recently.

Last month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention National Center for Environmental Health published a guide to assist public health officials to prepare for and cope with drought in their communities. The document includes information about how drought affects public health, recommends steps to help mitigate the health effects of drought and identifies future needs for research and other drought-related activities.

Among the CDC’s recommendations is to identify the populations that are most affected by a particular adverse condition. For instance, immune-compromised people drinking contaminated well water are most at risk of contracting infectious diseases. Once the affected populations have been identified, public health departments should actively collect and analyze quantitative and qualitative data to help determine the extent of the public health threat and the best steps to mitigate it.

The publication also suggests additional research in numerous areas including identifying the health effects of reusing water, using surveillance data to determine which chronic disease are more frequently reported during a drought, and identifying pathogens that can be used as drought indicators.

Intrigued?  You can find the entire publication by clicking here.

Filed Under: Evidence-Based Living, Health and Wellness, policy, The Learning Center Tagged With: , , ,

Evidence-Based Elections: If the House changes over, is it the President’s fault?

October 31, 2010 By Leave a Comment

In all of the hubbub about the upcoming elections, Evidence-Based Living had to ask: Is there any research evidence that might help us interpret what’s going on? (And, of course, we always scratch our heads about why there isn’t more discussion of research evidence on something so important.)

One of the few enlightening discussions I’ve seen comes in article by Jonathan Chait. Chait notes the endless debate over “Did Obama Lose the 2010 Elections?” that is roiling in media discussions this week.

Folks on the left say Obama’s responsible because he: 1) didn’t stick more to progressive principles, and 2) didn’t more aggressively tout the Democrats accomplishments. People on the right argue that Obama’s responsible because he 1) is out of step with what the country wants, and 2) has moved too far to the left.

But the blaming in either direction hinges on one question: What if the predicted election results are simply, well, normal? That is, what if the ruling party losing seats in the mid-term election is a predictable, scientific phenomenon, rather than someone’s (Obama’s, the Democrat’s, the media’s, etc.) fault? Of course, if this were the case, major news organizations would have nothing to discuss and pundits would be out of a job. Still, it’s worth considering.

This points us to an analysis by Douglas Hibbs, professor of political economy, in a just-published report from the Center for Public Sector Research. Hibbs, like a good scientist, makes clear that his model isn’t designed to specifically predict the elections, but rather to explain midterm House election outcomes in terms of systematic predetermined and exogenous factors.

Based on prior research, Hibbs tells us there are three fundamental factors that predict midterm elections:

1) the number of House seats won by the party in power in the previous election

2) the margin of votes by which the party in power’s candidates won in the prior presidential election

3) the average growth rate of per capita real disposable personal income during the congressional term (a measure of economic prosperity).

From the available data plugged into this model, Hibbs predicts the Democrats will lose about 45 seats. In other words, based on the model alone, we would expect the Democrats to lose control of the house even if the President made no difference at all. And most predictions show the Democrats losing about this many seats (or 5-10 more, depending on which electoral prediction web sites you look at).

Hibbs provides the necessary caveats about his work not being definitive. But it is certainly strong enough to make us ask: Where’s the science behind a lot of the political debate and punditry? The evidence-based perspective encourages us to be careful in attributing cause and effect where none may exist.

Filed Under: Evidence-Based Living, In The Media, policy Tagged With: ,

Evidence-Based Living Never Takes a Vacation: Resistance to Science

August 24, 2010 By Leave a Comment

While hanging with my large and boisterous family on the Massachusetts shore this week, the conversation turned to people’s resistance to scientific information. Now this is not actually all that surprising, because my extended family includes an unusual number of individuals who either are or were practicing scientists. Indeed, the gathering over the week involves several psychologists, a research dietician, a sociologist, two young budding researchers (one studying mood disorders, the other conducting research in a business school), a physician, and a historian.

Discussions emerged about issues of barefoot running (see previous post) and athletes’ use of steroids (this trumped our usual Yankees versus Red Sox debate for a while). Niece Julianna then posed the following question: Why are people so resistant to scientific evidence on some issues? Indeed, why does their resistance often approach the first-grade tactic of putting fingers in the ears and singing “I can’t hear you?” Several family members noted that when they have suggested, in the course of an argument, that the scientific evidence be consulted they get responses like: “I don’t care, I just know this is right.”

Of course, scientists haven’t left a topic like that alone. There is a body of research about why individuals reject even what the scientific community views as fundamental facts. An interesting article by Yale psychologists Paul Bloom and Deena Skolnick Weisberg provides a useful review. They begin by noting the prevalence of erroneous beliefs, including the curious finding from a Gallup poll that one-fifth of Americans believe that the Sun revolves around the Earth.

Bloom and Weisberg suggest that a primary reason “people resist certain scientific findings, then, is that many of these findings are unnatural and unintuitive.” Further, science involves asserted information (so we believe that Abraham Lincoln was a U. S. president, even though we can’t validate that information personally). There are few scientific findings we can validate directly – e.g., whether vaccines cause autism, whether natural selection operates, or whether repressed memories exist.

In sum, the data Bloom and Weisberg review suggest that people resist science when:

  • Scientific claims clash with intuitive expectations
  • Scientific claims are contested within society
  • A non-scientific alternative explanation exists that is based in common sense and is championed by people who are believed to be trustworthy and reliable.

A recent study published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology provides additional explanation. In a series of experiments, Gerald Munro found that when presented with scientific information that contradicts one’s beliefs, people invoke the “impotence of science” hypothesis; that is, they argue that it’s a topic that science can’t effectively study.

When people have very strong beliefs about a topic, research has shown that scientific evidence that is inconsistent with the beliefs has little impact in changing them. But even more problematic, Munro’s research suggests that this inconsistency between beliefs and scientific conclusions actually reduces people’s overall faith in science.  

All this provides interesting challenges for proponents of evidence-based living. We need not only to get scientific information out to the public, but we also need a much better understanding of how beliefs create resistance to information that might improve people’s lives.

Filed Under: Evidence-Based Living, policy, The Learning Center Tagged With: , , ,

What is translational research?

August 18, 2010 By 3 Comments

Today, we’re talking with Elaine Wethington, associate professor in the Departments of Human Development and Sociology at Cornell. Wethington is a medical sociologist and an expert in the areas of stress and social support systems. She’s also one of the nation’s leading experts in translational research methods.

Cornell’s College of Human Ecology is pursuing a translational research model to better link social and behavioral science research to extension and outreach, creating a more seamless link between science and service. But the question arises: What is “translational research?”

Evidence-Based Living sat down with Wethington to talk about the growing field of translational research.

To start off, what exactly is translational research?

Many definitions have been given for translational research, but the definition I like best is that it is a systematic effort to convert basic research knowledge into practical applications to enhance human health and well being. 

Translational research was designed for the medical world.  It emerged in response to concern over the long time lag between scientific discoveries and changes in treatments, practices, and health policies that incorporate the new discoveries.

What is applied research, and how does it differ?

Translational research is broader than the traditional term “applied research.”  Applied research is any research that may possibly be useful for enhancing health or well-being. It does not necessarily have to have any effort connected with it to take the research to a practical level. 

For example, an applied research study might analyze longitudinal data that tracks participants’ health and social relationships.  The researchers would report their findings in an academic journal.

But in translational research, the same study would include some “action steps.”  The researchers would partner with a community and ask for ideas about how their findings might apply there.  Together, they would come up with an intervention plan that would also include scientific evaluation of its effectiveness. 

Why are social science researchers slower to adopt these models compared to the medical community?

I think the answer to this question is that researchers have followed where the money has been allocated. The opportunities for social and behavioral scientists have not been established as rapidly.

More recently, three major government institutions have been funding projects that emphasize public health outreach using translational research – the Centers for Disease Control, the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute on Aging.  All three have been establishing translational research centers across the country, primarily focused on underserved communities and health disparities.

Thus, social scientists are only now being encouraged to take part.  More recently economic stimulus funds dispersed the National Institute of Health funded a number of translational research projects headed by social scientists, including three funded at Cornell.  I predict that soon there will be social scientists engaged in translational research across the country, not just at funded centers.

What are the benefits of moving toward translational research?

For researchers, there is benefit to being affiliated with a center that provides seed funding for projects, methodological assistance, advice on developing proposals and experience in getting community input into research projects.

For universities, translational research centers provide a tactical advantage for attracting more funding.  Translational research centers also provide a way for universities to meet public service goals in their strategic plans.

For communities, translational research provides opportunities to make a difference in their own communities.  As part of one of the Cornell centers, we engaged public service agency directors in events where they could contribute to our research agenda.  With a stake in the research, communities feel that they are making a valued and important contribution.  We heard over and over from the community members that this was a real source of pride and accomplishment for them.

How can extension programs participate?

One way local extension programs can participate in translational research is to take part in community stakeholder groups that meet with researchers who are designing intervention and prevention research programs.  Typically, a wide variety of stakeholders need to be engaged.  County Cooperative Extension offices have many collaborative relationships in their counties and can work with researchers to make contacts.

Typically, local extension professionals do not have time to engage in research themselves.  Yet they have valuable experience that can be shared.  This makes Cooperative Extension an ideal contributor for implementing programs.

Filed Under: Cornell Cooperative Extension, Evidence-Based Living, policy, The Learning Center Tagged With: , , , ,

Texting while driving: Clearly dangerous

August 10, 2010 By 3 Comments

Multitasking has become a way of life in this digital age, where most people can access their e-mail, their calendars and make phone calls from a mobile device they keep in their pockets or purse. While communication-on-the-go certainly can make us more efficient, it can have dire consequences as well.

Some 200,000 car accidents each year are caused by texting while driving, according to a report from the National Safety Council, a nonprofit group recognized by congressional charter as a leader on safety.

The scientific literature backs up the report.  A 2009 study of long-haul truckers by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute found drivers were more than 23 times more likely to experience a safety-critical event when texting. The study also found that drivers typically take their eyes off the road for an average of four out of six seconds when texting, during which time he travels the distance of a football field without their eyes on the road.

Another study by psychologists and the University of Utah found that texting while driving is riskier than talking on a cell phone or with another passenger. In the study, people texting in a driving simulator had more crashes, responded more slowly to brake lights on cars in front of them, and showed more impairment in forward and lateral control than did drivers who talked on a cell phone or drove without texting.

The Utah study found that drivers who talked on the phone attempted to divide their attention between the conversation and driving, adjusting the priority of each activity based on what was happening on the road.  But texting required drivers to switch their attention from one task to the other, causing a substantial reduction in reaction times compared to those talking on the phone.

State governments are responding to the evidence. Text messaging is banned for all drivers in 30 states and the District of Columbia. In addition, novice drivers are banned from texting in 8 states.  And President Barack Obama issued a texting-ban while driving for on all federal employees while using a government vehicle or government-issued cell phone.

The take home message: Save your text for non-driving times.

–        Sheri Hall

Filed Under: Evidence-Based Living, Health and Wellness, In The Media, policy Tagged With: , , , , ,
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