Public Health

Although neighborhood-level access to food differs by sociodemographic factors, almost all research on neighborhoods and food access has used a single construct of neighborhood context, such as income or race. Neighborhoods possess many interrelated built environment and sociodemographic characteristics, a condition that obscures relationships between neighborhood factors and food access. Methods: To account for the effects of many interrelated aspects of neighborhoods in food access, we developed a generally applicable method that used multiple measures (e.g., population density, mix of...

Latin America is the most unequal and urbanized region of the world. The physical and social environments of Latin American cities, the lack of public health and health-care infrastructure, and pronounced social and health inequities make these cities especially vulnerable to COVID-19. It is too soon to know the true impact of the pandemic and how it will compare to the many ongoing health and environmental challenges facing Latin American cities. In this commentary, we highlight a few key lessons with major implications not only for COVID-19 but for urban health and health...

The concept of a so-called urban advantage in health ignores the possibility of heterogeneity in health outcomes across cities. Using a harmonized dataset from the SALURBAL project, we describe variability and predictors of life expectancy and proportionate mortality in 363 cities across nine Latin American countries. Life expectancy differed substantially across cities within the same country. Cause-specific mortality also varied across cities, with some causes of death (unintentional and violent injuries and deaths) showing large variation within countries, whereas other causes of death...

This brief describes findings from a research effort to understand the changing impacts of the pandemic upon households from different places and backgrounds living in the United States. We investigated the effects of the pandemic along with pandemic-based restrictions and rules on people’s behavior along with their mental and emotional health, social relations, and livelihoods. Unlike other research efforts, as far as we are aware this effort is the only one to join passive data from cell phones with survey information collected from the same individuals over time. We combined these data...