Early-Life Exposure to Air Pollution and Childhood Asthma Cumulative Incidence in the ECHO CREW Consortium.

Importance: Exposure to outdoor air pollution contributes to childhood asthma development, but many studies lack the geographic, racial and ethnic, and socioeconomic diversity to evaluate susceptibility by individual-level and community-level contextual factors.

Objective: To examine early life exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and nitrogen oxide (NO2) air pollution and asthma risk by early and middle childhood, and whether individual and community-level characteristics modify associations between air pollution exposure and asthma.

Incidence rates of childhood asthma with recurrent exacerbations in the US Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) program.

Background: Descriptive epidemiological data on incidence rates (IRs) of asthma with recurrent exacerbations (ARE) are sparse.

Objectives: This study hypothesized that IRs for ARE would vary by time, geography, age, and race and ethnicity, irrespective of parental asthma history.

Methods: The investigators leveraged data from 17,246 children born after 1990 enrolled in 59 US with 1 Puerto Rican cohort in the Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) consortium to estimate IRs for ARE.

Precipitation and Adolescent Respiratory Health in the Northeast United States.

With more frequent and intense precipitation events across the globe due to a changing climate, there is a need to understand the relationship between precipitation and respiratory health. Precipitation may trigger asthma exacerbations, but little is known about how precipitation affects lung function and airway inflammation in early adolescents. To determine if short-term precipitation exposure is associated with lung function and airway inflammation in early adolescents and if ever having a diagnosis of asthma modifies associations of precipitation with lung function and airway inflammation.

Trends in Quick-Service Restaurants near Public Schools in the United States: Differences by Community, School, and Student Characteristics.

Background: More than one-third of children and adolescents consume foods from quick-service restaurants (QSRs) daily, which is associated with an increased risk of diet-related adverse health conditions.

Objective: To examine trends in the proximity of top-selling QSR chains to all public schools across the United States between 2006 and 2018 by community-, school-, and student-level characteristics.

Design: This longitudinal study examined changes in the number QSRs between the 2006-2007 and 2017-2018 school years using data from National Center for Education Statistics, Infogroup US Historical Business Data, and the US Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service.

Childhood Asthma Incidence, Early and Persistent Wheeze, and Neighborhood Socioeconomic Factors in the ECHO/CREW Consortium.

Importance: In the United States, Black and Hispanic children have higher rates of asthma and asthma-related morbidity compared with White children and disproportionately reside in communities with economic deprivation.

Objective: To determine the extent to which neighborhood-level socioeconomic indicators explain racial and ethnic disparities in childhood wheezing and asthma.

Design, Setting, And Participants: The study population comprised children in birth cohorts located throughout the United States that are part of the Children's Respiratory and Environmental Workgroup consortium.

Estimating the Burden of Child Undernutrition for Smaller Electoral Units in India.

Importance: Geographic targeting of public health interventions is needed in resource-constrained developing countries.

Objective: To develop methods for estimating health and development indicators across micropolicy units, using assembly constituencies (ACs) in India as an example.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This cross-sectional study included children younger than 5 years who participated in the fourth National Family and Health Survey (NFHS-4), conducted between January 2015 and December 2016.

Precision mapping child undernutrition for nearly 600,000 inhabited census villages in India.

There are emerging opportunities to assess health indicators at truly small areas with increasing availability of data geocoded to micro geographic units and advanced modeling techniques. The utility of such fine-grained data can be fully leveraged if linked to local governance units that are accountable for implementation of programs and interventions. We used data from the 2011 Indian Census for village-level demographic and amenities features and the 2016 Indian Demographic and Health Survey in a bias-corrected semisupervised regression framework to predict child anthropometric failures for all villages in India.

Spatiotemporal pattern of COVID-19 spread in Brazil.

Brazil has been severely hit by COVID-19, with rapid spatial spread of both cases and deaths. We used daily data on reported cases and deaths to understand, measure, and compare the spatiotemporal pattern of the spread across municipalities. Indicators of clustering, trajectories, speed, and intensity of the movement of COVID-19 to interior areas, combined with indices of policy measures, show that although no single narrative explains the diversity in the spread, an overall failure of implementing prompt, coordinated, and equitable responses in a context of stark local inequalities fueled disease spread.

TB notification rates across parliamentary constituencies in India: a step towards data-driven political engagement.

Objective: National averages obscure geographic variation in program performance. We determined Parliamentary Constituency (PC)-wise estimates of TB notification to guide political engagement.

Methods: We extracted district-level TB notification data from the 2018 annual TB report.

Estimating the burden of child malnutrition across parliamentary constituencies in India: A methodological comparison.

In India, data on key developmental indicators used to formulate policies and interventions are routinely available for the administrative unit of districts but not for the political unit of parliamentary constituencies (PC). Recently, Swaminathan et al. proposed two methodologies to generate PC estimates using randomly displaced GPS locations of the sampling clusters ('direct') and by building a crosswalk between districts and PCs using boundary shapefiles ('indirect').

Association of Prenatal Exposure to Population-Wide Folic Acid Fortification With Altered Cerebral Cortex Maturation in Youths.

Importance: Presently, 81 countries mandate the fortification of grain products with folic acid to lessen the risk of neural tube defects in the developing fetus. Epidemiologic data on severe mental illness suggest potentially broader effects of prenatal folate exposure on postnatal brain development, but this link remains unsubstantiated by biological evidence.

Objective: To evaluate associations among fetal folic acid exposure, cortical maturation, and psychiatric risk in youths.

Finding HIV in hard to reach populations: mobile HIV testing and geospatial mapping in Umlazi township, Durban, South Africa.

Mobile, community-based HIV testing may help achieve universal HIV testing in South Africa. We compared the yield, geographic distribution, and demographic characteristics of populations tested by mobile- and clinic-based HIV testing programs deployed by iThembalabantu Clinic in Durban, South Africa. From July to November 2011, 4,701 subjects were tested; HIV prevalence was 35 % among IPHC testers and 10 % among mobile testers (p < 0.

Spatial distribution of cosmetic-procedure businesses in two U.S. cities: a pilot mapping and validation study.

Cosmetic procedures have proliferated rapidly over the past few decades, with over $11 billion spent on cosmetic surgeries and other minimally invasive procedures and another $2.9 billion spent on U.V.

Evaluation of the positional difference between two common geocoding methods.

Geocoding, the process of matching addresses to geographic coordinates, is a necessary first step when using geographical information systems (GIS) technology. However, different geocoding methodologies can result in different geographic coordinates. The objective of this study was to compare the positional (i.