BACKGROUND Hukou is the household registration system in China that determines eligibility for various welfare benefits, such as health care, education, housing, and employment. The hukou system may lead to nutritional and health disparities in China. We aim at examining the role of the hukou system in affecting urban-rural disparities in child nutrition, and disentangling the institutional eff...

BACKGROUND Prior research has reported disparities in environmental exposures in the United States, but, to our knowledge, no nationwide studies have assessed inequality in noise pollution. OBJECTIVES We aimed to a) assess racial/ethnic and socioeconomic inequalities in noise pollution in the contiguous United States; and b) consider the modifying role of metropolitan level racial residential...

Motivated by concern about rising obesity rates, researchers have begun to map the neighborhood " food environment " and examine its association with the risk of overweight or obesity. Some argue that " food deserts " – areas with little or no provision of fresh produce and other healthy food – may contribute to disparities in obesity, diabetes, and related health problems. When access to healt...

Survival rates were low in large 19th-century American cities. We ask whether this was attributable to a few “bad” wards or whether urban wards were uniformly bad. The paper employs two datasets. The Union Army database has been augmented with veterans who enlisted in and/or resided in Boston, Chicago, New York City (including Brooklyn), and Philadelphia. Additionally, the Historical Urban Ecol...

BACKGROUND Urban-rural disparities in suicide mortality have received considerable attention. Varying conceptualizations of urbanity may contribute to the conflicting findings. This ecological study on Germany assessed how and to what extent urban-rural suicide associations are affected by 14 different urban-rural indicators. METHODS Indicators were based on continuous or k-means classified p...

BACKGROUND Despite advances in the quality and delivery of stroke care, regional disparities in stroke incidence and outcome persist. Spatial analysis using geographic information systems (GIS) can assist in identifying high-risk populations and regional differences in efficacy of stroke care. The aim of this study was to identify and locate geographic clusters of high or low rates of stroke, r...

background :there is substantial lack of knowledge about the role of socioeconomic status (ses) indicators on life expectancy (le) within-cities, especially within mega-cities. we aimed to investigate the disparities of le within city districts of tehran, iran, and specify how ses inequalities play role on le.   methods : the death and population data for 2010 by different age, gender, and resi...

While numerous studies have examined the magnitude of the urban heat island, no large-scale study has yet analyzed its variability using an air-mass based methodology. The air-mass approach can provide unique insight by discerning how large-scale weather patterns may impact the magnitude of the heat island effect. This study utilizes the Spatial Synoptic Classification (SSC) scheme, a recently-...