Background: Voice disorders cause undesirable effects on school teachers such as reducing their quality of life, decrease in work performance affecting the quality of education, job absenteeism, and reduced social activities as well. Methodology: Voice disorder among teachers was assessed through the “Voice handicap Index”, which was developed by Jacobson et al in 1997 to self-assess the severity of voice disorder in dysphonia patients Results: The overall prevalence of voice disorder among government school teachers was found to be 46.5% with a 95% confidence interval from 41.5% to 51.5%. Using Backward Wald, the binary logistic regression analysis showed that female teachers (AOR 1.6, p<0.01*), teaching experience less than 10 years (AOR 2.4, p<0.01*), and teaching hours more than 21 hours per week (AOR 6.7, p<0.01*) had a significant association with voice disorders. Conclusion: The prevalence of voice disorder was found to be high since teachers are professional voice users. The study also recommends that teachers must receive the required health education on the ergonomic risk factors that they will come into contact with in their daily lives as part of their jobs.

Introduction: Several anthropometric measurements like Body mass index (BMI), skin fold thickness, Waist circumference (WC), waist-height ratio (WHtR), and Waist hip ratio (WHR) are available for diagnosing obesity at the population level. But each of them has its disadvantage as well. Neck circumference, which has been the recent anthropometric tool of interest can be used as an alternative to these measurements. Objective: To determine the validity of neck circumference as an anthropometric parameter of obesity and to estimate the cut-off points for obesity in type II diabetes mellitus patients. Material & Methods: This analytical cross-sectional study was done among 141 Type II diabetes patients attending rural and urban health training center Non-communicable disease clinic of Sri Ramachandra Institute of higher education and research, Chennai. After obtaining informed consent, their anthropometric measurements like NC, BMI, WC, HC, and WHR was measured. Results:  Neck circumference ≥36.5cm in males and ≥33.2cm in females is conceivably the perfect cut-off point for diagnosing overweight/Obesity in Type II diabetes mellitus. Conclusion: This analytical study deduced that NC is a valid anthropometric measurement for diagnosing obesity among Type II diabetes mellitus with plausible sensitivity and specificity.

Background: Diabetes Mellitus is a chronic metabolic and non-communicable disease characterized by high blood glucose levels and has multiple aetiologies. According to the IDF Atlas recent edition, the Global prevalence of diabetes was 9.3% and currently, India holds second position globally with 77 million adults living with diabetes and in 2030 it was expected to cross 101 million. This high prevalence of diabetes was due to the interaction of multiple factors leading to a significant economic burden to the countries health system. Diabetes over the long term causes micro vascular and macro vascular complications, that were sometimes difficult to manage, necessitating the need for self-care practices to prevent the progression of the disease. Objective: To assess the prevalence of self-care practices among type II diabetes mellitus patients in rural and urban health training canters. Methodology: The study was carried out among Type II diabetes Mellitus patients attending Non-communicable disease (NCD) clinic in Rural and Urban health training center of Sri Ramachandra medical college and research institute, Chennai – 600116. After obtaining the informed consent, socio-demographic details were collected and the information on self-care practices was assessed using the revised Summary of Diabetes self-care Activities (SDSCA) questionnaire.