OBJECTIVES First to explore differences in prevalence of overweight and obesity between rural and urban areas of 10 European countries, then to determine whether body mass index varies with the countries' gross domestic product. METHODS We used baseline data (2004) from countries participating in the Study of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe, which included 16,695 non-institutionalized...

Mapping Impervious Surface Area (ISA) at regional and global scales has attracted increasing interest. DMSP-OLS nighttime light (NTL) data have proven to be successful for mapping urban land in large areas. However, the well-documented issues of pixel blooming and saturation limit the ability of DMSP-OLS data to provide accurate urban information. In this paper, a multi-source composition index...

Introduction: A composite index (or simply an index) is constructed with an objective to obtain a synoptic or comprehensive single number, representing a vast array of measurements on the multiple aspects of a ‘conceptual entity’ such as general price level, cost of living, level of economic development and regional disparities (Adelman and Morris, 1967; Pal, 1975; Mishra and Chopra, 1978; Mish...

Objectives The aim of this study was to evaluate socioeconomic inequalities in the prevalence of dental caries among an urban population. Methods This study was conducted among 2000 people 15-40 years of age living in Kurdistan, Iran in 2015. Using a questionnaire, data were collected by 4 trained dental students. The dependent variable was the decayed, missing, and filled teeth (DMF) index. ...

The accurate and efficient extraction of urban areas is great significance for better understanding sprawl, built environment, economic activities, population distribution. Night-Time Light (NTL) data have been widely used to extract areas. However, most the existing NTL indexes are incapable identifying non-luminous built-up high-resolution imagery derived from Luojia 1-01 satellite, with low ...

The study investigates water quality pollution impacts on urbanization by analyzing temporal and spatial characteristics of different water quality parameters, and simulating economic loss of water quality pollution in Xi’an, China from 1996 to 2003. Results show that organic pollutants were the greatest contributors of surface water quality pollution from 1996 to 2003. High values existed in p...

OBJECTIVE Childhood obesity has become a priority health concern worldwide. Socioeconomic status is one of its main determinants. This study aimed to assess the socioeconomic inequality of obesity in children and adolescents at national and provincial levels in Iran. METHODS This multicenter cross-sectional study was conducted in 2011-2012, as part of a national school-based surveillance prog...

OBJECTIVE Pedestrian and cyclist collisions comprise a significant proportion of preventable injury. In urban settings, collision rates have been linked to various socio-demographic factors. We sought to determine whether neighbourhood marginalization affects pedestrian and cyclist collisions in the Greater Toronto Area. METHODS For 114 intersections, pedestrian and cyclist collisions were ex...

BACKGROUND There is, globally, an often observed inequality in the health services available in urban and rural areas. One strategy to overcome the inequality is to require urban doctors to spend time in rural hospitals. This approach was adopted by the Beijing Municipality (population of 20.19 million) to improve rural health services, but the approach has never been systematically evaluated. ...