ABSTRACT
The purpose of this paper is to report on the capacity building efforts that took place during the dissemination research phase of Heart Health Nova Scotia (HHNS). HHNS, a health promotion research team, is funded by Health Canada and the Nova Scotia Department of Health. It is located in Halifax, Nova Scotia, a province of 937,000 people situated on the east coast of Canada. It has been a member of the Canadian Heart Health Initiative since its inception in 1989. The first phase of the program, Demonstration, was successfully completed in December 1995 (Heart Health Nova Scotia, 1995). In 1996, HHNS entered its second phase, Dissemination Research, which was conducted between April 1996 and March 2001 in the Western Health Region of Nova Scotia. This was completed in collaboration with organizations, community groups, and government agencies who joined HHNS to form the Heart Health Partnership (HHP) (Heart Health Nova Scotia, 2001). The main aim of this phase of the initiative was to build and research organizational capacity for health promotion and chronic disease prevention.
Subject(s)
Health Promotion/organization & administration , Heart Diseases/prevention & control , National Health Programs/organization & administration , Primary Prevention/organization & administration , Diffusion of Innovation , Humans , Logistic Models , Models, Organizational , Nova Scotia , Program Development/methods , Regional Health Planning/organization & administrationABSTRACT
The Clinician Interview-Based Impression of Change, plus carer interview (CIBIC-Plus), is widely used in antidementia drug trials. It comprises Likert scales for disease severity and changes, and written accounts summarizing semistructured interviews evaluating behavior, cognition, and function. Studies using the CIBIC-Plus have focused on the numeric scores to the exclusion of the textual data. Our study explored both sets of data to evaluate whether the CIBIC-Plus written data supported (a) the clinicians' global evaluation of patients' changes during treatment, and (b) the emergence of consistent treatment effects. The global (numeric) scales of change were inconsistently supported by the textual data provided in the CIBIC-Plus. No consistent treatment effects were noted. Methodological problems presently limit the retrospective use of the CIBIC-Plus textual data. Improved standardization of note-taking in the CIBIC-Plus textual data may allow for a better understanding of the typical profiles and clinical importance of changes seen in the course of dementia treatment.
