As the researchers explain: “Efforts by marketers to anthropomorphize products may be viewed as shifting the category of evaluation from product to human, and more specifically, to particular human categories such as friends, helpers, families, or spokespeople.”
That friendly car is smiling at me: When products are perceived as people
101,000 fewer Americans would die annually if the US improved its preventable death rate to that of the 3 top performing nations
January 8, 2008, Bethesda, MD—The United States places last among 19 countries when it comes to deaths that could have been prevented by access to timely and effective health care, according to new research supported by The Commonwealth Fund and published in the January/February issue of Health Affairs. While other nations dramatically improved these rates between 1997–98 and 2002–03, the U.S. improved only slightly.
If the U.S. had performed as well as the top three countries out of the19 industrialized countries in the study there would have been 101,000 fewer deaths in the U.S. per year by the end of the study period. The top performers were France, Japan, and Australia.
In “Measuring the Health of Nations: Updating an Earlier Analysis,” Ellen Nolte and Martin McKee of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine compare trends in deaths that could have been prevented by access to timely and effective health care. Specifically, they looked at deaths “amenable to health care before age 75 between 1997–98 and 2002–03.”
Nolte and McKee found that while other countries made strides and saw these types of deaths decline by an average of 16%, the U.S. experienced only a 4% decline. “It is notable that all countries have improved substantially except the U.S.,” said Nolte, lead author of the study. The authors also note that “it is difficult to disregard the observation that the slow decline in U.S. amenable mortality has coincided with an increase in the uninsured population, an issue that is now receiving renewed attention in several states and among presidential candidates from both parties.”
“It is startling to see the U.S. falling even farther behind on this crucial indicator of health system performance,” said Commonwealth Fund Senior Vice President Cathy Schoen. “By focusing on deaths amenable to health care, Nolte and McKee strip out factors such as population and lifestyle differences that are often cited in response to international comparisons showing the U.S. lagging in health outcomes. The fact that other countries are reducing these preventable deaths more rapidly, yet spending far less, indicates that policy, goals, and efforts to improve health systems make a difference.”
In 1997–98 the U.S. ranked 15th out of 19 countries on the “mortality amenable to health care” measure. However, by 2002–03 the U.S. fell to last place, with 109 deaths amenable to health care for every 100,000 people. In contrast, mortality rates per 100,000 people in the leading countries were: France (64), Japan (71), and Australia (71). The other countries included in the study were Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
Study authors state that the measure of deaths amenable to health care is a valuable indicator of health system performance because it is sensitive to improved care, including public health initiatives. It considers a range of conditions from which it is reasonable to expect death to be averted even after the condition develops. This includes causes such as appendicitis and hypertension, where the medical nature of the intervention is apparent; it also includes illnesses that can be detected early with effective screenings such as cervical or colon cancer, and tuberculosis which, while acquisition is largely driven by socio-economic conditions, is not fatal when treated in a timely manner.
“Cross-national studies conducted by The Commonwealth Fund indicate that our failure to cover all Americans results in financial barriers that are much more likely to prevent many U.S. adults from getting the care they need, compared with adults in other countries,” said Commonwealth Fund President Karen Davis. “While no one country provides a perfect model of care, there are many lessons to be learned from the strategies at work abroad.”
That's very un-R.John of you...
I have a feeling that a lot of those "preventable deaths" are attributed to smoking related diseases and other "diseases of excess" that could be easily eradicated with some easily implemented gestapo type tactics.
I am just trying to bolster my case that americans
are the worst anti-american terrorists that america
faces. Really who kills more americans? Insurgents
or our fellow citizens.
GOOOO TEAM!!
http://www.gopusa.com/news/2007/february/0222_illegals_report.shtml
Even those lazy wet backs are better American killers than the Al Kaydas.
Bisexual and unlabeled women were more likely than lesbians to change their identity over the course of the study, but they tended to switch between bisexual and unlabeled rather than to settle on lesbian or heterosexual as their identities.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-01/apa-bna011508.php
In the race of evolution, scientists until now have only looked at winners and losers. Now, they’ve come up with a way to look at the contenders who never made it out of the gate.
It’s the organisms – in this case lizards – that die early in life, before scientists can even assess what they might bring to the reproduction game, and that have gone uncounted in the effort to quantify genetic fitness. This group has been dubbed the “invisible fraction.”
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-01/msu-sla012108.php
Leading up to and during your most productive years, you get the safe and cushy indoor jobs -- work that is important but unlikely to kill you. When you have a limited amount of time to live, however, you get assigned to land mine clearing and high-risk construction. That way, when you get blown up or fall from a girder, it is not as though you had that much more to offer.
“Women are more likely than men to focus on negative emotional aspects of stressful circumstances, for example, they tend to ‘ruminate’ or think over and over again about their negative emotional state,” she said. “Men, in contrast, are more likely to distract themselves from negative emotions, to try not to think about these emotions. Our finding that men had greater blood pressure response to stress, but did not report greater sadness and anxiety, may reflect that they are more likely to try to distract themselves from their physiological arousal, possibly through the use of alcohol.”
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-05/ace-mam050908.php
The risk of being hospitalized from being violently assaulted increases when there is increased alcohol sales near the victim's residence, finds a new study in this week's PLoS Medicine.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-05/plos-roh050808.php
Images of sexy women tend to whet men's sexual appetite. But stimulating new research in the Journal of Consumer Research says there's more than meets the eye. A recent study shows that men who watched sexy videos or handled lingerie sought immediate gratification—even when they were making decisions about money, soda, and candy.
Authors Bram Van den Bergh, Siegfried DeWitte, and Luk Warlop (KULeuven, Belgium) found that the desire for immediate rewards increased in men who touched bras, looked at pictures of beautiful women, or watched video clips of young women in bikinis running through a park.
"It seems that sexual appetite causes a greater urgency to consume anything rewarding," the authors suggest. Thus, the activation of sexual desire appears to spill over into other brain systems involved in reward-seeking behaviors, even the cognitive desire for money.
"After they touched a bra, men are more likely to be content with a smaller immediate monetary reward," writes Bram Van den Bergh, one of the study's authors. "Prior exposure to sexy stimuli may influence the choice between chocolate cake or fruit for dessert."
The authors believe the stimuli bring men's minds to the present as opposed to the future. "The study demonstrates that bikinis cause a shift in time preference: Men live in the here and now when they glance at pictures featuring women in lingerie. That is, men will choose the immediately available rewards and seek immediate gratification after sex cue exposure."
Do all straight men respond the same? Actually, no. Some men are highly responsive to rewards while others are not so sensitive, and the more reward-sensitive men are the impatient ones.
In fact, doing a task designed to inspire financial satisfaction reduced the bikini-inspired impatience, just as feeling full reduces food cravings. Men may want to be aware of bikinis' effects on their bank accounts and waistlines.
###
Bram Van den Bergh, Siegfried DeWitte, and Luk Warlop. "Bikinis Instigate Generalized Impatience in Intertemporal Choice" Journal of Consumer Research: June 2008.
Founded in 1974, the Journal of Consumer Research publishes scholarly research that describes and explains consumer behavior. Empirical, theoretical, and methodological articles spanning fields such as psychology, marketing, sociology, economics, and anthropology are featured in this interdisciplinary journal. The primary thrust of JCR is academic, rather than managerial, with topics ranging from micro-level processes (e.g., brand choice) to more macro-level issues (e.g., the development of materialistic values).
out now
Are they just figuring this out now?
Every day I am disappointed further by just how slow on the uptake human beings really are.