Mobilizing knowledge about urban change for equity and sustainability: developing 'Change Stories', a multi-country transdisciplinary study.

Background: Health-focused research funders increasingly support multi-country research partnerships that study health, urban development and equity in global settings. To develop new knowledge that benefits society, these grants require researchers to integrate diverse knowledges and data, and to manage research-related aspects of coloniality, such as power imbalances and epistemic injustices. We conducted research to develop a transdisciplinary study proposal with partners in multiple middle and high income countries, aiming to embed equity into the methodology and funding model.

Association between hospitalizations for sensitive conditions and quality of primary care.

Objective: To analyze the association between municipal rates of ambulatory care sensitive conditions (ACSC) hospitalization and the quality of primary health care (PHC), socioeconomic, and demographic variables and those related to local characteristics of the health system from 2010 to 2019.

Method: Ecological time series study in Brazilian municipalities analyzing the correlation of ACSC hospitalization rates with PHC quality measured by the three cycles of the Primary Care Access and Program for improving primary care access and quality (PMAQ-AB). The study included municipalities whose teams participated in 80% or more of at least two PMAQ-AB cycles.

[Quality of prehospital fixed components of the Brazilian Emergency and Urgent Care Network: a study based on data from PMAQ-AB and PNASS].

The organization and management of integrated health systems is complex and challenging. As a strategy to improve the quality and access to urgent services, the Brazilian Ministry of Health implemented the Emergency and Urgent Care Network (RUE), comprised of care facilities with different technological levels. Assess the quality of prehospital fixed components of the RUE in health macroregions.

Admissions due to ambulatory care-sensitive conditions (ACSC): an analysis based on socio-demographic characteristics, Brazil and regions, 2010 to 2019.

Objective: To analyze the temporal trend of hospital admissions due to Ambulatory Care-Sensitive Conditions (ACSC) in Brazil per sex, region, cause and age group, from 2010 to 2019.

Methods: This is an ecological study based on the temporal trend of ACSC rates. Standardized rates were analyzed in a simple linear regression and a generalized linear model (GLM) Gamma.

Fractured lives in fractured cities: Towards a critical understanding of urban violence in the context of market-driven urban restructuring processes in Bogotá and Rio de Janeiro.

Based on a comparative case study on two neighborhoods in Bogota and Rio de Janeiro (2017-2019) and a comprehensive literature review, this article proposes a critical Public Health approach to urban violence and makes a case for understanding the phenomenon in the context of market-driven urban territorial restructuring processes that assume specific qualities in cities of the Global South. The case studies are based on focus groups and semi-structured interviews with residents, specialists and community leaders. It is argued that urban violence is a key public health challenge, particularly in Latin America, given its dimensions and its impact on the populations' life and health.

Revisiting the social determinants of health agenda from the global South.

In an effort to provide an overview of the conceptual debates shaping the mobilisation around social determinants of health and health inequities and challenge the apparent consensus for equity in health, this essay compares two of the most influential approaches in the field: the WHO Commission on Social Determinants of Health approach (CSDH), strongly influenced by European Social Medicine, and the Latin American Social Medicine and Collective Health (LASM-CH) 'Social determination of the health-disease process' approach, hitherto largely invisibilized. It is argued that the debates shaping the equity in health agenda do not merely reflect conceptual differences, but essentially different ethical-political proposals that define the way health inequities are understood and proposed to be transformed. While the health equity agenda probably also gained momentum due to the broad political alliance it managed to consolidate, it is necessary to make differences explicit as this allows for an increase in the breadth and specificity of the debate, facilitating the recognition of contextually relevant proposals towards the reduction of health inequities.

Measuring health inequities in low and middle income countries for the development of observatories on inequities and social determinants of health.

Background: Almost seven years after the publication of the final report of the World Health Organization's Commission on Social Determinants of Health (CSDH), its third recommendation has not been attended to properly. Measuring health inequities (HI) within countries and globally, in order to develop and evaluate evidence-based policies and actions aimed at the social determinants of health (SDH), is still a pending task in most low and middle income countries (LMIC) in the Latin American region. In this paper we discuss methodological and conceptual issues to measure HI in LMIC and suggest a three-stage methodology for the creation of observatories on health inequities (OHI) and social determinants of health, based on the experience of the Brazilian Observatory on Health Inequities (BOHI) that has been successfully operating since 2010 at the Fundação Oswaldo Cruz (FIOCRUZ).

Mapping of capacities for research on health and its social determinants in Brazil.

This article describes tendencies in research on social determinants of health (SDH) and health inequities in Brazil (2005-2012) and maps research system structures to analyze capacities for research on health and its social determinants. Brazil has a strong national research system and counts on a wealth of research in the field of SDH drawing on a long tradition of research and political commitment in this area. While innovative strategies seeking to strengthen the links between research, policy and practice have been developed, the impact of SDH research continues to be largely restricted to the academic community with notable but still insufficient repercussions on public policy and the social determinants of health inequities.

[Conceptual differences and praxiological implications concerning social determination or social determinants].

The differences between the social determination of health approach adopted by the Latin-American Social Medicine and Collective Health movement and the WHO's social determinants of health approach are not merely conceptual but involve ethical and political considerations. Different notions of causality and risk are implied in the aforementioned approaches and shape how concepts regarding health-illness and health inequity are understood and how they may be confronted. This article attempts to clarify the praxiological implications of such approaches and contextualise the approaches' socio-historical construction, address epistemological, methodological and ontological differences and propose some considerations regarding the praxiological implications.