Publications by authors named "Joao Luiz Bastos"

This cross-sectional study evaluated the configural and metric structures of the Intersectional Discrimination Index (InDI), an instrument that measures anticipated (InDI-A), dat-to-day (InDI-D), and major (InDI-M) discrimination. Data from a broader study, focused on the impacts of discrimination on the mental health of women living in Brazil, were used. Approximately 1,000 women, selected according to a convenience sampling scheme, answered the InDI and questions about sociodemographic characteristics in an electronic form that was administered in 2021.

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Objective: To estimate the prevalence of general and public access to prescription drugs in the Brazilian population aged 15 or older in 2019, and to identify inequities in access, according to intersections of gender, color/race, socioeconomic level, and territory.

Methods: We analyzed data from the 2019 National Health Survey with respondents aged 15 years or older who had been prescribed a medication in a healthcare service in the two weeks prior to the interview (n = 19,819). The outcome variable was access to medicines, subdivided into general access (public, private and mixed), public access (via the Unified Health System - SUS) for those treated by the SUS, and public access (via the SUS) for those not treated by the SUS.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study examines the Explicit Discrimination Scale (EDS) used in Brazilian surveys to assess discrimination, focusing on whether its measurement is consistent across different demographic groups.
  • Using data from the EpiFloripa Adult Study, which surveyed a representative sample of adults in southern Brazil, the research analyzed two shortened versions of the EDS with different item counts.
  • Results showed that both versions of the EDS can reliably compare discrimination experiences across varying skin colors/ethnicities, sexes, and socioeconomic statuses, but one item showed inconsistency for a specific demographic group, indicating the need for further research.
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The relationships between race, education, wealth, their intersections and AIDS morbidity/mortality were analyzed in retrospective cohort of 28.3 million individuals followed for 9 years (2007-2015). Together with several sensitivity analyses, a wide range of interactions on additive and multiplicative scales were estimated.

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This article proposes a reflection on the imperative of antiracism in collective oral health, which, as a science, field, core, and praxis, contributes significantly to the reconstruction of an ethos that considers equity and enables citizenship and democracy. As a paradigm, we assumed the concept of "Buccality" and the guidelines of the National Comprehensive Health Policy for the Black Population, emphasizing the defense of the right to health as a prerogative of the right to life and the combat against racism and all forms of discrimination systematically. As a critical exercise, we discussed the status quo of collective oral health.

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Stress and discrimination negatively affect quality of life, but social support may buffer their effects. This study aims: (1) to examine the associations between psychological stress, discrimination, and oral health-related quality of life (OHRQoL); and (2) to assess whether social support, stress and discrimination interact to modify their associations with OHRQoL. We used cross-sectional household-based data from a study including 396 individuals aged 14 years and over from families registered for government social benefits in a city in Southern Brazil.

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Primary health care (PHC) systems are a crucial instrument for achieving equitable population health, but there is little evidence of how PHC reforms impact equities in population health. In 2010, Sweden implemented a reform that promoted marketization and privatization of PHC. The present study uses a novel integration of intersectionality-informed and evaluative epidemiological analytical frameworks to disentangle the impact of the 2010 Swedish PHC reform on intersectional inequities in avoidable hospitalizations.

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Conceptual or theoretical models are crucial in developing causal hypotheses and interpreting study findings, but they have been underused and misused in aetiological research, particularly in dentistry and oral epidemiology. Good models should incorporate updated evidence and clarify knowledge gaps to derive logical hypotheses. Developing models and deriving testable hypotheses in operational models can be challenging, as seen in the four examples referred to in this commentary.

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Objective: To perform the cross-cultural adaptation of Intersectional Discrimination Index (InDI) into Brazilian Portuguese. InDI assesses the health impacts of intersectional experiences with anticipated (InDI-A), day-to-day (InDI-D), and major (InDI-M) discrimination.

Methods: The following steps were taken: (1) independent translations; (2) synthesis of translations; (3) evaluation by an expert committee; (4) analysis by members of the target population; (5) back translation; and (6) pre-test.

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Objective: To carry out a critical review of the literature on the use of race, color, and ethnicity in the field of public health dentistry.

Methods: A literature search was conducted in MEDLINE via PubMed for articles published between 2014 and 2019. Using a data extraction form, we collected information on (1) bibliographic characteristics of the selected papers; (2) race, color, and ethnicity of the study participants and their sociodemographic profiles; and (3) the extent to which the original publications followed the recommendations by Kaplan and Bennett (2003) on the use of race, color, or ethnicity in biomedical research.

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The study investigated how the interaction between axes of marginalization based on race/color, gender, schooling, and interpersonal discrimination affect different dimensions of quality of life in adult individuals. This is a cross-sectional study with data from the second wave of the EpiFloripa Adult Study in Florianópolis, southern Brazil, in 2012. We estimated linear regression models for each domain and for overall quality of life, measured with WHOQOL-Bref.

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Research in several Latin American countries points to violence, loss of traditional territories, and seeking education, health, and wage labor as key variables in triggering rural-urban migration among Indigenous people. This study presents an analysis of the migration patterns of Indigenous people in Brazil, compared to non-indigenous people, based on data from the most recent national census, conducted in 2010. Migration characteristics related to lifetime migration and recent migration were investigated by means of descriptive and multivariable logistic regression analyses.

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Health policies in Brazil have sought to expand healthcare access and mitigate inequities, but recent revisions of their content have weakened the Brazilian Unified Health System. This study estimates three healthcare indicators across three national surveys conducted in 2008, 2013, and 2019 to assess the impact of changes to the National Primary Care Policy on racial inequities in healthcare. Considering the survey design and sampling weights, we estimated the prevalence of each outcome among both whites and Blacks for the whole country, and according to the Brazilian regions.

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The development and cross-cultural adaptation of measurement instruments have received less attention in methodological discussions, even though it is essential for epidemiological research. At the same time, the quality of epidemiological measurements is often below ideal standards for the construction of solid knowledge on the health-disease process. The scarcity of systematizations in the field about what, what for, and how to adequately measure intangible constructs contributes to this scenario.

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Research on healthcare inequities has centralized whether marginalized racial, gender, or socioeconomic (SES) groups are afforded equitable access to care, yet scant investigations have focused on how race intersects with other social statuses to shape difficulty accessing health services. Contextual specificity has also been under-researched in this field of knowledge. Data from 59,249 respondents 18 years of age and over from the 2013 Brazilian National Health Survey were analyzed using multilevel regressions models.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study aims to investigate how much individual socioeconomic status, smoking habits, and dental service usage contribute to racial differences in tooth loss and functional dentition among older Brazilians.
  • Data was collected from a large sample of individuals aged 50 and older, focusing on tooth loss and the presence of 20 or more natural teeth, with a particular emphasis on racial identity.
  • Results revealed significant disparities in tooth health among racial groups, with various factors accounting for 71% of the observed racial inequities, with dental visits and smoking being major contributors, especially among younger participants.
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Background: There is a dearth of studies on the extent to which perceived racial discrimination shapes oral health. Following an intersectional perspective, we estimated the prevalence of perceived racial discrimination in Australia, its association with oral health impairment, and examined whether this association was more severe among low socioeconomic status (SES) groups.

Methods: Data came from the 2013 National Dental Telephone Interview Survey (N = 2798), a population-based study of Australian adults.

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Systemic arterial hypertension (SAH) or high blood pressure a serious global public health problem marked by social inequalities. There are few studies on SAH in Brazil with a life-course theoretical perspective. The current article aims to analyze the relationship between intergenerational educational mobility (IEM) and SAH in Brazilian adults, verifying the impact of interpersonal and color/"race" discrimination on this relationship.

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Aim: The present study aims to develop the Race-related Attitudes and Multiculturalism Scale (RRAMS), as well as to perform an initial psychometric assessment of this instrument in a national sample of Australian adults.

Methods: The sample comprised 2,714 Australian adults who took part in the 2013 National Dental Telephone Interview Survey (NDTIS), which includes a telephone-based interview and a follow-up postal questionnaire. We used Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) to evaluate the RRAMS' factorial structure (n = 271) and then proceeded with Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) to confirm the proposed structure in an independent sample (n = 2,443).

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This critical commentary extends the debate on social determinants of health and disease. Its main argument is that while further studies are unnecessary to demonstrate the fundamentally social distribution of health outcomes, extant analyses rarely engage with the fact that poverty and other forms of oppression are political choices made by societies, which are both contemporaneously contingent and historically situated. This view must guide research and debate in the area so that studies intending to bring injustice to light do not end up naturalizing it.

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