Background. Daycare centres play a role in hepatitis A infection epidemiology; however, there is little information on this infection among daycare educators in Canada. / Objective. To determine hepatitis A seroprevalence and risk factors among daycare educators. / Methods. Directors and educators from randomly selected daycare centres in Montreal completed questionnaires on daycare-level and educator-level characteristics. Sera were collected during on-site visits. / Results. The seroprevalence of hepatitis A among the 492 participating educators was 35.6% (15.9% among Canadian-born educators). Risk factors included: region of birth by income-level (OR = 20.8; 95% CI: 9.4, 46.0); report of previous hepatitis A vaccination (OR = 6.1; 95% CI: 2.9, 13.0); travel to endemic areas (OR = 2.4; 95% CI: 1.3, 4.2); and age (OR5-yr = 1.5; 95% CI: 1.3, 1.7). For Canadian-born educators, a further association was found between seropositivity and years worked in daycare (OR5-yr = 1.3; 95% CI: 1.0, 1.8). / Conclusion. In a non-outbreak situation, daycare educators share similar risk factors for seropositivity with the general population. Canadian-born educators appear to be placed at additional risk by working in daycare centres, and may benefit from vaccination.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.29459 |
| Date | January 2002 |
| Creators | Muecke, Cristin J. |
| Contributors | Gyorkos, Theresa W. (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Science (Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001944881, proquestno: MQ85810, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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