Title
Is city-level travel time by car associated with individual obesity or diabetes in Latin American cities? Evidence from 178 cities in the SALURBAL project
Date Issued
01 December 2022
Access level
open access
Resource Type
journal article
Author(s)
Delclòs-Alió X.
Rodríguez D.A.
Olmedo N.L.
Ferrer C.P.
Moore K.
Stern D.
de Menezes M.C.
de Oliveira Cardoso L.
Wang X.
Guimaraes J.M.N.
Sarmiento O.L.
CRÓNICAS, Centro de Excelencia en Enfermedades Crónicas
Publisher(s)
Elsevier Ltd
Abstract
There is growing evidence that longer travel time by private car poses physical and mental risks. Individual-level obesity and diabetes, two of the main public health challenges in low- and middle-income contexts, could be associated to city-level travel times by car. We used individual obesity and diabetes data from national health surveys from individuals in 178 Latin American cities, compiled and harmonized by the SALURBAL project. We calculated city-level travel times by car using the Google Maps Distance Matrix API. We estimated associations between peak hour city-level travel time by car and obesity and diabetes using multilevel logistic regression models, while adjusting for individual characteristics and other city-level covariates. In our study we did not observe a relationship between city-level peak-hour travel time by car and individual obesity and diabetes, as reported in previous research for individual time spent in vehicles in high-income settings. Our results suggest that this relationship may be more complex in Latin America compared to other settings, especially considering that cities in the region are characterized by high degrees of population density and compactness and by a higher prevalence of walking and public transportation use.
Volume
131
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
Políticas de salud, Servicios de salud
Anatomía, Morfología
Subjects
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-85136565588
Source
Cities
ISSN of the container
02642751
Sponsor(s)
The Salud Urbana en América Latina (SALURBAL)/Urban Health in Latin America project is funded by the Wellcome Trust [ 205177/Z/16/Z ]. Xavier Delclòs-Alió received funding from the Ministry of Science and Innovation of Spain under the “Ayudas para contratos Juan de la Cierva-formación 2019” ( FJC2019-039725-I ).
Sources of information:
Directorio de Producción Científica
Scopus