[Intersectionality and food insecurity in favelas in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais State, Brazil].

Food insecurity has serious implications for populations' health and lives. Many social determinants have been identified, but understanding food insecurity remains limited due to a fragmented view that segregates vulnerability dimensions. This study aims to analyze food (in)security based on an intersectional perspective, having two favelas in Belo Horizonte (Minas Gerais State, Brazil) and their surroundings as its studied site.

Gender and urban health: a Latin American structured tool for research and policy.

Latin American cities have evolved via exclusionary historical processes, resulting in hasty and unplanned urbanization, insufficient infrastructure, and extreme levels of violence. These issues have well-documented health implications. In urban settings, gender may lead to unequal access to opportunities and services, however, its consideration into policies, interventions, and research remains insufficient, potentially exacerbating urban inequities.

Variability and social patterning of cancer mortality in 343 Latin American cities: an ecological study.

Background: Understanding between-city variations in cancer mortality is crucial to inform national and subnational cancer prevention strategies. However, studies at the city level in Latin America are scarce. As part of the Salud Urbana en América Latina (SALURBAL) project, we aimed to describe the variability in cancer mortality rates across 343 cities in nine Latin American countries and the associations of these rates with city-level socioeconomic development.

[Neighborhood characteristics in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais State, Brazil: an intraurban analysis using systematic social observation method].

Systematic social observation (SSO) is an objective method of measuring the neighborhood physical and social characteristics. This study aimed to build intraurban indicators using the SSO method and compare them between two slums and their surroundings in a Brazilian capital. The simple indicators were calculated using the ratio estimator method, and grouped into domains.

Social epidemiology of urban COVID-19 inequalities in Latin America and Canada.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has spread through pre-existing fault lines in societies, deepening structural barriers faced by precarious workers, low-income populations, and racialized communities in lower income sub-city units. Many studies have quantified the magnitude of inequalities in COVID-19 distribution within cities, but few have taken an international comparative approach to draw inferences on the ways urban epidemics are shaped by social determinants of health.

Methods: Guided by critical epidemiology, this study quantifies sub-city unit-level COVID-19 inequalities across eight of the largest metropolitan areas of Latin America and Canada.

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 Household Deprivation and Living in Informal Settlements and Incidence of Diarrhea in Children Under 5 in Eleven Latin American Cities.

Diarrhea is a leading cause of death in children globally, mostly due to inadequate sanitary conditions and overcrowding. Poor housing quality and lack of tenure security that characterize informal settlements are key underlying contributors to these risk factors for childhood diarrhea deaths. The objective of this study is to better understand the physical attributes of informal settlement households in Latin American cities that are associated with childhood diarrhea.

Which physical and social characteristics of Brazilian cities contribute to physical activity of adolescents?

This study aimed to analyze the association between adolescents' physical activity and the Brazilian capitals' built and social environment. The units of analysis of this ecological study were the 26 capitals and the Federal District, with data from the National Adolescent Health Survey (2012). The outcome variable was the reported regular physical activity (PA) of ninth graders in Brazilian schools.

Impact of the program life in traffic and new zero-tolerance drinking and driving law on the prevalence of driving after alcohol abuse in Brazilian capitals: An interrupted time series analysis.

Introduction: Driving under the influence of alcohol is one of the main factors for morbidity and mortality from traffic accidents. In 2010 and 2013, the Program Life in Traffic was implemented in Brazil, including the international initiative "Road Safety in Ten Countries", which established actions to reduce one of the main risk factors for road traffic injuries, the driving under the influence of alcohol. In 2012, a new zero-tolerance drinking and driving law (new dry law) was implemented, establishing a zero-tolerance limit for the drivers' blood alcohol concentration, and increasing punitive measures.

Physical and social neighborhood disorder in Latin American cities: a scoping review.

Neighborhood disorder is an important aspect that may influence the health of residents in urban areas. The aims of this study were to map and systematize methods for measuring physical and social neighborhood disorder in studies conducted in Latin American cities. By means of a scoping review, articles published from 2000 in English, Spanish, and Portuguese with the following descriptors were mapped: neighborhood, physical disorder, and social disorder.

Determining the relationship between dengue and vulnerability in a Brazilian city: a spatial modeling analysis.

Dengue is a viral infection transmitted by the Aedes aegypti mosquito. This study aimed to assess the distribution of cases and deaths from dengue and severe dengue, and its relationship with social vulnerability in Belo Horizonte, State of Minas Gerais, Brazil, from 2010 to 2018. The incidence and lethality rates of dengue and their relationship with sex, age, education, skin color, and social vulnerability were studied using chi-square tests, Ordinary Least Squares (OLS), and Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) analyses.

The influence of neighborhood safety and built environment on childhood obesity: isolated and combined effect of contextual factors.

This study aims to analyze the isolated and combined effect of objective measures concerning neighborhood safety, food, and physical activity environments on students' obesity. This is a cross-sectional study conducted with 9- and 10-year-old children enrolled in the municipal education network of a Brazilian metropolis. Environment objective measures comprised neighborhood unsafety (annual criminality and road traffic accident rates), availability of public parks and spaces for physical activity practicing, and index of establishments that predominantly sell ultra-processed food.

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.

Temporal trends of dengue cases and deaths from 2007 to 2020 in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.

Dengue, a disease with multifactorial determinants, is linked to population susceptibility to circulating viruses and the extent of vector infestation. This study aimed to analyze the temporal trends of dengue cases and deaths in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil, from 2007 to 2020. Data from the Notifiable Diseases Information System (Sinan) were utilized for the investigation.

Assessing cohesion and diversity in the collaboration network of the SALURBAL project.

The SALURBAL (Urban Health in Latin America) Project is an interdisciplinary multinational network aimed at generating and disseminating actionable evidence on the drivers of health in cities of Latin America. We conducted a temporal multilayer network analysis where we measured cohesion over time using network structural properties and assessed diversity within and between different project activities according to participant attributes. Between 2017 and 2020 the SALURBAL network comprised 395 participants across 26 countries, 23 disciplines, and 181 institutions.

Socioeconomic Urban Environment in Latin America: Towards a Typology of Cities.

This paper aims to identify typologies of Latin American cities based on socioeconomic urban environment patterns. We used census data from 371 urban agglomerations in 11 countries included in the SALURBAL project to identify socioeconomic typologies of cities in Latin America. Exploratory factor analysis was used to select a set of variables, and finite mixture modelling (FMM) was applied to identify clusters to define the typology of cities.

Variation in youth and young adult homicide rates and their association with city characteristics in Latin America: the SALURBAL study.

Background: Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) is one of the most urbanized and violent regions worldwide. Homicides in youth (15-24 years old, yo) and young adults (25-39yo) are an especially pressing public health problem. Yet there is little research on how city characteristics relate to homicide rates in youth and young adults.

A decreased trajectory of loneliness among Brazilians aged 50 years and older during the COVID-19 pandemic: ELSI-Brazil.

This study aimed to estimate prevalence of loneliness among older Brazilian adults over the first seven months of the COVID-19 pandemic and to identify the predictors of loneliness trajectories. Pre-pandemic data derived from face-to-face interviews of participants of the 2019-2020 Brazilian Longitudinal Study of Aging (ELSI-Brazil), which is a nationally representative study of community-dwelling individuals aged 50 years and over. Pandemic data were based on three rounds of telephone interviews among those participants, conducted from May to October 2020.

Women's empowerment and infant mortality in Latin America: evidence from 286 cities.

Levels of women's empowerment (WE) can contribute to differences in infant mortality rates (IMRs) across cities. We used a cross-sectional multilevel study to examine associations of WE with IMRs across 286 cities in seven Latin American countries. We estimated IMRs for 2014-2016 period and combined city socioeconomic indicators into factors reflecting living conditions and service provision.