This dissertation aimed to examine the consequence of health-induced poverty and two policy responses to address this issue among older adults in the United States and China. Specifically, Paper I investigates whether public transfers crowded out private transfers among rural and urban Chinese older families and if this dynamic would change when health care expenses were high. Paper II examines the effect of New Rural Cooperative Medical Insurance, a national health insurance program for rural residents in China, on changing the incidence of health-induced poverty among middle-aged and older beneficiaries. Paper III tests the effects of closing the Medicare Part D donut hole (coverage gap) through the Affordable Care Act (ACA) on changing prescription drug cost-induced poverty. Overall, the findings obtained from these three papers provide empirical evidence that health-induced poverty is prevalent among older adults in both China and the United States and the current public transfers and health policies are either ineffective or insufficient to reduce health-induced poverty as intended.

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Health disparities are preventable differences in health status and outcomes that adversely affect certain populations, and are generally attributable to unjust social or environmental influences. Mitigating health disparities is crucial toward preventing unnecessary and avoidable human suffering, and as such there has been a significant increase in health disparities research and funding. However, existing health disparities publications are geographically-constrained to specific institutions or populations, and often rely on disease definitions that cannot be easily applied elsewhere. While more recent publications have begun identifying differences utilizing larger datasets, for most diseases, differences in prevalence, age of onset, and time to diagnosis differences remain unstudied and unknown. This dissertation leverages informatics solutions built atop observational health datasets to enable high-throughput, reproducible assessments of disparities across subgroups, conditions, and datasets. In the first aim, this dissertation examines the literature to identify how health disparities in disease diagnosis are measured, computed, and reported. It then proposes an iterative approach for generating fair phenotype definitions that are more inclusive of subgroups of interest by utilizing algorithmic fairness measurements translated to epidemiological measures. In the second aim, this dissertation conducts large-scale characterizations of disease diagnosis patterns across subgroups (gender and race), conditions, and datasets. In particular, this dissertation conducts a prevalence-based assessment of disease diagnosis by computing prevalence differences, risk ratios, and age of onset differences across diseases and datasets. The dissertation then conducts a scalable assessment of time to diagnosis differences across 122 disease phenotypes. Finally, in the third aim, this dissertation moves from quantifying differences to identifying disparities in diagnosis. To do so, the dissertation applies a framework for causal fairness to decompose observed time to diagnosis differences into direct, indirect, and spurious effects. In conclusion, this dissertation's primary contributions are providing a systematic, scalable approach for identifying health differences and then quantifying health disparities at-scale across large-scale observational health datasets. The dissertation (1) proposes an iterative approach for systematically assessing the fairness of phenotypes used in observational health research, (2) systematically characterizes differential patterns of disease diagnosis across diseases and observational datasets, and (3) causally decomposes differences into quantifiable effects that suggest the presence of potential health disparities.

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Thesis (PhD (Food Science))--University of Stellenbosch, 2006. / The aim of the study was to provide the South African wine industry with guidelines for the production of Pinotage wines with optimal total antioxidant capacity (TAC), while retaining sensory quality. The contribution of individual phenolic compounds to the wine TAC is important in this regard. The wine TAC was measured with the 2,2 -azino-di(3-ethylbenzo-thiazoline-sulphonic acid radical cation) (ABTS +) scavenging assay. The contributions of individual phenolic compounds to the wine TAC were calculated from their content in the wines and the Trolox equivalent antioxidant capacity (TEAC) of pure phenolic standards. The effects of climate region, vine structure, enological techniques (pre-fermentation maceration, juice/skin mixing, addition of commercial tannins, extended maceration) and maturation (oak barrels, alternative oak products, oxygenation) on the phenolic composition, TAC and sensory quality of Pinotage wines were also investigated. The TEAC values of quercetin-3-galactoside, isorhamnetin and peonidin-3-glucoside were reported for the first time. TEAC values observed for most compounds were much lower than those reported previously, although TEAC values for gallic acid, caftaric acid, caffeic acid and kaempferol were consistent with some previous reports. Caftaric acid and malvidin-3-glucoside were the largest contributors to the wine TAC. The contents of monomeric phenolic compounds and procyanidin B1, however, only explained a small amount (between 11 and 24%) of the wine TAC, with the remaining TAC attributed to oligomeric and polymeric phenolic compounds and other unknown compounds. Some synergy between different monomeric phenolic compounds was also demonstrated. All the viticultural and enological factors investigated affected the phenolic composition of Pinotage wines, while the wine TAC was only affected by some treatments. Changes in wine TAC could not always be explained by changes in phenolic composition as the contribution of oligomeric, polymeric and unknown compounds could not be assessed, but could play a large role. Differences in wine colour were also difficult to explain due to the large number of factors involved and the dark wine colour, which made objective measurements difficult. The concentration of vitisin A, an orange-red pyranoanthocyanin, was increased consistently as a result of prefermentation maceration treatments and affected the wine colour of oxygenated wines. Increased wine TAC was observed when cultivating Pinotage grapes on bush vines and in cooler climatic regions, compared to cultivation on trellised vines in warmer climatic regions. All the climatic regions and vine structure treatments, however, resulted in wines with good sensory quality. In terms of enological techniques, pumping-over, as opposed to punching-down and rotor treatments, is not recommended as a juice/skin mixing technique, due to reduced wine TAC, colour and sensory quality. Pre-fermentation maceration, addition of commercial tannin preparations, and oak maturation using traditional and alternative treatments, resulted in improved sensory quality, but with no change in wine TAC. However, optimisation of the tannin addition protocol may result in increased wine TAC if additions are made after fermentation or higher dosages are used. Oxygenation of Pinotage wine needs further investigation to optimise the protocol, as improvements to the wine colour and fullness were observed for some treatments, but loss of sensory quality and TAC were observed in most cases.

The experimental studies of this work were done using a microwave cavity spectrometer, Escherichia coli (E-coli) bacteria, and other peripheral equipment. The experiment consists of two steps. First, a general survey of frequencies from 8 GHz to 12 GHz was made. Second, a detailed experiment for specific frequencies selected from the first survey were further studied. Interesting frequency dependent results, such as unusually higher growing or killing rates of E-coli at some frequencies, were found. It is also concluded that some results are genetic, that is, the 2nd, and 3rd subcultures showed the same growing status as the 1st cultures.

The transition towards a service-based society, defined as deindustrialization, has led to an extensive body of research exploring the socio-economic and health impacts of industrial decline. The literature has been mainly confined to the regional effects of unemployment and inactivity. However, considering the morbidity and mortality outcomes of this event, most studies have focused on single cases such as regions and specific industrial occupational groups. Within this context, this thesis aims to assess the health-related implications of deindustrialization by considering the elements of contrast, magnitude and time. Those elements capture the dynamic nature and uneven pace of industrial decline across different levels, aggregated and individual. This thesis measures and compares the severity of industrial decline across Europe and seeks to identify whether deindustrialization is associated with mortality variations. By including fixed effects modeling it distinguishes between the long and short-term relationship of industrial decline and mortality. Furthermore, this thesis adopts a longitudinal perspective and aims to explore the long-term self-assessed morbidity of various occupational groups by following their transition towards unemployment, inactivity and re-employment. The analysis follows a logistic regression approach based on the evaluation of self-assessed morbidity. It concludes that deindustrialization is a transitional event that progresses unevenly and disproportionately affects health at national, regional and individual levels. At a population level, industrial decline appears to be beneficial for health as countries have progressed towards the creation of safer contemporary working environments. At an individual level, the transitional effects of occupational mobility do not uniformly influence the morbidity of individuals. The extent of the susceptibility of certain countries, regions and population groups towards this event is a result of various internal and external socio-economic factors, health-related and political decisions. Subsequently, this thesis introduces the necessity of rethinking the health consequences of deindustrialization, whereas future research should consider the changing nature of employment within the industrial and service sectors.

The aim of this study was to investigate the current level of awareness and use of the Great American Smokeout (GASO) and the extent to which that may vary by lifetime smoking, socioeconomic status, age and gender. We hypothesized and found that the current levels of awareness and use were significantly less than the most recent reports available (over 13 years ago), and that awareness of the GASO was more likely in lifetime smokers, those with more education, and older age groups, but found no significant effect related to gender. The drop in awareness and use of the GASO was more than half and almost five times, respectively, compared to that of most recent previous reports. These findings highlight a critical need for more attention and resources to reinvigorate the GASO as a useful event for smokers. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.S.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2016. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Huang Ying. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 29-31). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Chapter 1. --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter 2. --- Literature Review --- p.3 / Chapter 3. --- Methodology --- p.7 / Chapter 3.1. --- Basic Model --- p.7 / Chapter 3.2. --- Instrumental Variable Strategy --- p.8 / Chapter 4. --- Data Description --- p.10 / Chapter 4.1. --- China Health and Nutrition Survey --- p.10 / Chapter 4.2. --- Sample Selection --- p.11 / Chapter 4.3. --- Variable Definition --- p.12 / Chapter 4.4. --- Summary Description of Samples --- p.14 / Chapter 5. --- The Effects of Health on Labor Supply --- p.15 / Chapter 5.1. --- Rural Adults --- p.15 / Chapter 5.2. --- Urban Adults --- p.19 / Chapter 5.3. --- Results --- p.22 / Chapter 6. --- The Effects of Health on Household Income --- p.23 / Chapter 7. --- Conclusion --- p.26 / References --- p.29 / Tables --- p.32 / Appendix --- p.66