Neighborhood environment associations with cognitive function and structural brain measures in older African Americans.

Background: Since older adults spend significant time in their neighborhood environment, environmental factors such as neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage, high racial segregation, low healthy food availability, low access to recreation, and minimal social engagement may have adverse effects on cognitive function and increase susceptibility to dementia. DNA methylation, which is associated with neighborhood characteristics as well as cognitive function and white matter hyperintensity (WMH), may act as a mediator between neighborhood characteristics and neurocognitive outcomes.

Methods: In this study, we examined whether DNA methylation in peripheral blood leukocytes mediates the relationship between neighborhood characteristics and cognitive function (N = 542) or WMH (N = 466) in older African American (AA) participants without preliminary evidence of dementia from the Genetic Epidemiology Network of Arteriopathy (GENOA).

Rigorous Policy Measurement: causal inference challenges and opportunities.

Epidemiologists are increasingly asking questions about the effects of policies on health and health disparities, generally using quasi-experimental methods. Researchers have developed a burgeoning body of rigorous methodological work focused on addressing potential inference challenges arising from modeling choices, study design, data availability, and common sources of bias in policy evaluations using observational data. However, epidemiologists have paid less attention to measurement and operationalization of policy exposures.

Heterogeneity in disparities by income in cardiovascular risk factors across 209 US metropolitan areas.

Objective: The United States has a lower life expectancy and wider income inequality than its similarly developed counterparts, and disparities continue to widen. The objective of our study is to examine the heterogeneity of disparities by income in cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors among U.S.

Climate hazards in Latin American cities: Understanding the role of the social and built environments and barriers to adaptation action.

Climate hazards threaten the health and wellbeing of people living in urban areas. This study characterized reported climate hazards, adaptation action, and barriers to adaptation in 124 Latin American cities, and associations of climate hazards with urban social and built environment characteristics. We examined cities that responded to a global environmental disclosure system and that were included in the Urban Health in Latin America (SALURBAL) Project database.

Epigenetic Aging and Racialized, Economic, and Environmental Injustice: NIMHD Social Epigenomics Program.

Importance: Epigenetic age acceleration is associated with exposure to social and economic adversity and may increase the risk of premature morbidity and mortality. However, no studies have included measures of structural racism, and few have compared estimates within or across the first and second generation of epigenetic clocks.

Objective: To determine whether epigenetic age acceleration is positively associated with exposures to diverse measures of racialized, economic, and environmental injustice measured at different levels and time periods.

Impact of an enhanced sobriety checkpoints programme and publicity campaign on motor vehicle collisions, injuries and deaths in Leon, MX: a synthetic control study.

Objective: Drunk driving is a major cause of road traffic injuries and deaths in Latin America. We evaluated the impact of a drunk driving intervention in Leon, Mexico on road traffic safety.

Methods: The intervention included increased drunk driving penalties, enhanced sobriety checkpoints and a young adult-focused mass media campaign, beginning 19 December 2018.

Improvements in habitability and housing satisfaction after dwelling regeneration in social housing complexes. The RUCAS study.

Housing is a pressing problem worldwide and a key determinant of health and wellbeing. The right to adequate housing, as a pillar of the right to an adequate standard of living, means more than a roof to live under. Adequate means the dwelling must fulfill material functions and psychosocial functions, thus contributing to dwellers health and wellbeing.

Corrigendum to "Health disparities in past influenza pandemics: A scoping review of the literature" [SSM - Population Health (2023) 21C 101314].

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1016/j.ssmph.

Trends in the contribution of greenhouse gas emissions from food and beverage purchases in Mexico: 1989-2020.

Background: Assessing the trends in dietary GHGE considering the social patterning is critical for understanding the role that food systems have played and will play in global emissions in countries of the global south. Our aim is to describe dietary greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE) trends (overall and by food group) using data from household food purchase surveys from 1989 to 2020 in Mexico, overall and by education levels and urbanicity.

Methods: We used cross-sectional data from 16 rounds of Mexico's National Income and Expenditure Survey, a nationally representative survey.

Uncovering physical activity trade-offs in transportation policy: A spatial agent-based model of Bogotá, Colombia.

Background: Transportation policies can impact health outcomes while simultaneously promoting social equity and environmental sustainability. We developed an agent-based model (ABM) to simulate the impacts of fare subsidies and congestion taxes on commuter decision-making and travel patterns. We report effects on mode share, travel time and transport-related physical activity (PA), including the variability of effects by socioeconomic strata (SES), and the trade-offs that may need to be considered in the implementation of these policies in a context with high levels of necessity-based physical activity.

Short-term associations between fine particulate air pollution and cardiovascular and respiratory mortality in 337 cities in Latin America.

Ambient air pollution is a health concern in Latin America given its large urban population exposed to levels above recommended guidelines. Yet no studies have examined the mortality impact of air pollutants in the region across a wide range of cities. We assessed whether short-term levels of fine particulate matter (PM) from modeled estimates, are associated with cardiovascular and respiratory mortality among adults in 337 cities from 9 Latin American countries.

The Science of Precision Prevention: Research Opportunities and Clinical Applications to Reduce Cardiovascular Health Disparities.

Precision prevention embraces personalized prevention but includes broader factors such as social determinants of health to improve cardiovascular health. The quality, quantity, precision, and diversity of data relatable to individuals and communities continue to expand. New analytical methods can be applied to these data to create tools to attribute risk, which may allow a better understanding of cardiovascular health disparities.

An epigenome-wide analysis of DNA methylation, racialized and economic inequities, and air pollution.

Importance: DNA methylation (DNAm) provides a plausible mechanism by which adverse exposures become embodied and contribute to health inequities, due to its role in genome regulation and responsiveness to social and biophysical exposures tied to societal context. However, scant epigenome-wide association studies (EWAS) have included structural and lifecourse measures of exposure, especially in relation to structural discrimination.

Objective: Our study tests the hypothesis that DNAm is a mechanism by which racial discrimination, economic adversity, and air pollution become biologically embodied.

Neighborhoods and Cardiovascular Health: A Scientific Statement From the American Heart Association.

The neighborhoods where individuals reside shape environmental exposures, access to resources, and opportunities. The inequitable distribution of resources and opportunities across neighborhoods perpetuates and exacerbates cardiovascular health inequities. Thus, interventions that address the neighborhood environment could reduce the inequitable burden of cardiovascular disease in disenfranchised populations.

Ambient nitrogen dioxide in 47 187 neighbourhoods across 326 cities in eight Latin American countries: population exposures and associations with urban features.

Background: Health research on ambient nitrogen dioxide (NO) is sparse in Latin America, despite the high prevalence of NO-associated respiratory diseases in the region. This study describes within-city distributions of ambient NO concentrations at high spatial resolution and urban characteristics associated with neighbourhood ambient NO in 326 Latin American cities.

Methods: We aggregated estimates of annual surface NO at 1 km spatial resolution for 2019, population counts, and urban characteristics compiled by the SALURBAL project to the neighbourhood level (ie, census tracts).

Greenness and excess deaths from heat in 323 Latin American cities: Do associations vary according to climate zone or green space configuration?

Green vegetation may protect against heat-related death by improving thermal comfort. Few studies have investigated associations of green vegetation with heat-related mortality in Latin America or whether associations are modified by the spatial configuration of green vegetation. We used data from 323 Latin American cities and meta-regression models to estimate associations between city-level greenness, quantified using population-weighted normalized difference vegetation index values and modeled as three-level categorical terms, and excess deaths from heat (heat excess death fractions [heat EDFs]).

Gender differences in the association of individual and contextual socioeconomic status with hypertension in 230 Latin American cities from the SALURBAL study: a multilevel analysis.

Background: Despite global interest in gender disparities and social determinants of hypertension, research in urban areas and regions with a high prevalence of hypertension, such as Latin America, is very limited. The objective of this study was to examine associations of individual- and area-level socioeconomic status with hypertension in adults living in 230 cities in eight Latin America countries.

Methods: In this cross-sectional study, we used harmonized data from 109,184 adults (aged 18-97 years) from the SALURBAL (Salud Urbana en America Latina/Urban Health in Latin America) project.