Public Health

Greenness and Education Inequalities in Life Expectancy in Latin American Cities: An Ecological Study

Moran, M
Bilal, U
Dronova, I
Ju, Y
Gouveia, N
Caiaffa, W
Friche, A
Moore, K
Miranda, J
Rodriguez, D
2021
Greenness has been found to be associated with reduced mortality and morbidity and improved wellbeing, with recent evidence further linking it to narrower health inequalities. However, results come mostly from high-income countries and thus might not be generalisable to other settings. In this preliminary analysis, we address this gap by examining whether education inequalities in life expectancy in Latin American cities vary by area-level greenness.We used data from the Salud Urbana en America Latina (SALURBAL) study. The analysis sample included 28 large cities in nine Latin American...

Support for Market-based and Command-and-Control Congestion Relief Policies in Latin American Cities: Effects of Mobility, Environmental Health, and City-level Factors

Wang, X
Rodriguez, D
Mahendra, A
2021
Public support for the implementation of congestion relief policies is critical for the policies’ technical and political success. To identify the personal, social, and city-level factors associated with higher acceptance towards such policies, this study uses a 2016 survey of 8178 residents from 11 cities across 10 Latin American countries collected by the Development Bank of Latin America (Corporación Andina de Fomento or CAF). We examined support for two demand-side approaches to managing the traffic congestion externality: congestion pricing – a market-based approach, and driving...

Advancing Research in Transportation and Public Health: A Selection of Twenty Project Ideas from a US Research Roadmap

Dannenberg, AL
Rodriguez, D
Sandt, LS
2021
Transportation policies and projects have multiple impacts on health. Research on these impacts can help promote positive and reduce adverse health consequences of decisions made by transportation agencies. In 2019 the U.S. National Cooperative Highway Research Program published a research roadmap for transportation and public health based on an extensive literature search and key informant interviews. The roadmap identified 44 research gaps and 122 research needs on a wide range of relevant topics. From this list, using pre-established criteria including specificity, equity, potential impact...

The Impact of Population Mobility on COVID-19 Incidence and Socioeconomic Disparities at the Sub-city Level in 314 Latin American Cities

Kephart, JL
Delclòs-Alió, X
Bilal, U
Sarmiento, O
Barrientos-Gutierrez, T
Rodriguez, D
Ramirez-Zea, M
Quistberg, A
Roux, AV Diez
2021

Little is known about the impact of changes in mobility at the sub-city level on subsequent COVID-19 incidence or the contribution of mobility to socioeconomic disparities in COVID-19 incidence. Methods We compiled aggregated mobile phone location data, COVID-19 confirmed cases, and features of the urban and social environments to analyze linkages between population mobility, COVID-19 incidence, and educational attainment at the sub-city level among cities with >100,000 inhabitants in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala, and Mexico from March to August 2020. We used mixed effects...

Ambient Fine Particulate Matter in Latin American Cities: Levels, Population Exposure, and Associated Urban Factors

Gouveia, N
Kephart, J
Dronova, I
McClure, L
Granados, J
Rodriguez, D
Bentancourt, R
O'Ryan, A
Texalac-Sangrador, J
Martinez-Folgar, K
Roux, AV Diez
2021
Exposure to particulate matter (PM2.5) is a major risk factor for morbidity and mortality. Yet few studies have examined patterns of population exposure and...

Heterogeneity in the Urban Scaling of Premature Mortality by City Definition in the United States

McCulley, EM
Mullachery, PH
Rodriguez, D
Roux, AV Diez
Bilal, U
2021
With more than half of the world’s population currently living in cities, there is a need to understand how city-level factors, such as city size, can influence health in cities. However, there are numerous ways to define and delineate city boundaries. We explored whether years of life lost (YLL), a measure of premature mortality, scales with population size in the United States (US) from 2010 to 2015 and examined whether these scaling patterns vary by city definition, using eight different definitions. Across all city definitions, YLL displayed a sublinear scaling behavior: larger cities...

Longitudinal Associations between the Neighborhood Built Environment and Cognition in US Older Adults: The Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis

Besser, L
Chang, L
Hirsch, J
Rodriguez, D
Renne, J
Rapp, S
Fitzpatrick, A
Heckbert, S
Kaufman, J
Hughes, T
2021
Few studies have examined associations between neighborhood built environments (BE) and longitudinally measured cognition. We examined whether four BE characteristics were associated with six-year change in global cognition and processing speed. We obtained data on 1816 participants without dementia from the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis. BE measures included social destination density, walking destination density, proportion of land dedicated to retail, and network ratio (street connectivity). Global cognition was measured with the Cognitive Abilities Screening Instrument (CASI) and...

Public Transit Use in the United States in the Era of COVID-19: Transit Riders’ Travel Behavior in the COVID-19 Impact and Recovery Period

Parker, M
Li
Bouzaghrane, M
Obeid, H
Hayes, D
Frick, K
Rodriguez, D
Sengupta, R
Walker, J
Chatman, D
2021
COVID-19 has upended travel across the world, disrupting commute patterns, mode choices, and public transit systems. In the United States, changes to transit service and reductions in passenger volume due to COVID-19 are lasting longer than originally anticipated. In this paper we examine the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on individual travel behavior across the United States. We analyze mobility data from...

Built Environment Profiles for Latin American Urban Settings: The SALURBAL Study

Sarmiento, OL
Useche, A
Rodriguez, DA
Dronova, I
Guaje, O
Montes, F
Stankov, I
Wilches, M
Bilal, U
Wang, X
Guzman, L
Pena, F
Quistberg, D
Guerra-Gomez, J
Roux, AV Diez
2021

The built environment of cities is complex and influences social and environmental determinants of health. In this study we, 1) identified city profiles based on the built landscape and street design characteristics of cities in Latin America and 2) evaluated the associations of city profiles with social determinants of health and air pollution. Landscape and street design profiles of 370 cities were identified using finite mixture modeling. For landscape, we measured fragmentation, isolation, and shape. For street design, we measured street connectivity, street length, and directness. We...

Transit Oriented Development: An Appraisal of Trends and Opportunities for Latin America

Rodriguez, Daniel
2021

In recent years, Transit Oriented Development (TOD) is increasingly accepted due to its great potential for leading cities towards more sustainable futures. This f ruitful coordination between a city’s investments in mass transit and its land development strategy has enabled better accessibility, increased walkability and mixed land use around transit areas. This technical note reviews TOD at several scales in order to comprehend the trends, opportunities and challenges for its development and implementation, with a focus on yielding lessons for Latin America. First, the document discusses...