Objective:This study tested associations between church-based instrumental and informational social support and meeting physical activity guidelines.Methods:Cross-sectional data were analyzed for 1625 rural residents using logistic regression.Results:Associations were found between instrumental social support and performing some amount of physical activity but not between the 2 forms of support and meeting physical activity guidelines.Conclusion:Instrumental social support might help initiation of physical activity. Given that 54.1% of US adults get no leisure-time physical activity at the recommended minimum level, instrumental social support might be important in considering physical activity programs.

Women with obstetric complications will seek hospital care if services are available. Government hospital services can be improved by building on existing resources. Obstetric CFR can be dramatically reduced. The need for safe abortion services, which are currently illegal in Sierra Leone, is demonstrated.

The project improved utilization of the PHUs by women with complications, indicating that once services are of acceptable quality, many women will use them. The contribution of the motivators was positive, though smaller than expected.

The results of this study demonstrated the feasibility and efficacy of an academic institution collaborating with the African American community in developing educational tools for biospecimen donation.

An intervention workshop was organised by a community-based project with aim to promote HIV Voluntary Counselling and Testing (VCT) and assess the perception of participants about the benefits of VCT and knowing their HIV status. The intervention workshop was conducted on a group of thirty teachers who consented to participate in the study. For the qualitative assessment, focus group discussions on three thematic topics were conducted and the outcome collated and analysed for consistency. The three themes were -benefits of an individual knowing his/her HIV status; harms of an individual knowing his /her HIV status; how to facilitate or encourage VCT uptake. The focal group discussions showed that there were fundamental psychosocial barriers to acceptability of VCT amongst the study participants. These included the issue of stigmatisation, fear of death from AIDS, negative effect on relationship and emotional depression. The study shows the need for healthcare professionals and policy makers involved in HIV/AIDS control to develop more patient-centred and friendly intervention that will overcome these negative perceptions of VCT.