A desordem física e sua influência nos desfechos relacionados à saúde em adultos e idosos residentes em centros urbanos: evidências de cinco países da América Latina

Abstract

Introduction: Unequal urbanization, striking in developing countries, and the rapid population aging can adversely affect life satisfaction and self-rated health among adults and old people. The role of the physical and social environment that may be related to these outcomes should be investigated, especially among individuals living in Latin American cities, where urbanization and aging have been so fast. Objectives: To investigate the association between life satisfaction, individual characteristics and objective measures of the built environment, among old people living in Belo Horizonte, Brazil (Paper 1), as well as to investigate the association between self-rated health and perceived neighborhood characteristics among adults living in four Latin American cities (Paper 2). Method: In order to reach the first objective data from the household survey "Saúde em Beagá" (2008-2009) and the objective characterization of the environment by the systematic social observation method (SSO) (2011), carried out in two of the nine Sanitary Districts of Belo Horizonte - Brazil, were used. The survey had a stratified probabilistic sampling design in three-stage conglomerates (census tract, household and a resident of 18 years and over). A total of 4,048 individuals were interviewed and data from participants aged 60 and over were analyzed for this study (n=834). Life satisfaction was assessed by the Ladder Scale and categorized as satisfied and dissatisfied. The explanatory variables were: demographic and socioeconomic, lifestyle, religious participation, health, and objective measures of the built environment. Multilevel Poisson regressions analyses, in the bivariate and multivariate models, with robust variance were used to investigate the association between life satisfaction and explanatory variables. In order to reach the second objective data from a household survey conducted by the Latin American Development Bank (CAF) between 2016 and 2017, among individuals between 20 and 60 years old (N=3,588), in four Latin American cities (Buenos Aires, Lima, Mexico City and Panama City) were analyzed. Self-rated health was categorized as poor and good. Explanatory variables were neighborhood scales: Physical Disorder, Social Disorder, Access to Services, Access to Leisure Spaces, and Social Cohesion, created using empirical Bayesian estimation. The covariates were: individual age, gender, education, wealth index (created with variables of ownership of consumer goods, access to basic services and housing characteristics), length of residency in the respective neighborhood and city; and a neighborhood social environment index, created with harmonized census variables. Multilevel logistic regressions with two levels (individual and “sub-city”) were used. Results: Results from Article 1 showed a higher prevalence of life satisfaction in elderly people with higher incomes, higher religious participation, who practiced physical activity and who had good/very good self-rated health. In addition, a lower prevalence of life satisfaction was observed among those living in neighborhood with higher physical disorder, even after adjusting for individual and other contextual characteristics. Findings from Article 2 showed that poor self-rated health was positively associated with Physical Disorder, even after controlling for individual and contextual-level characteristics. Conclusions: Interventions and strategies that improve the characteristics of the physical and social environment in which individuals live can improve life satisfaction and self-rated health among adults and the elderly people living in cities from Latin America.