Considering the lack of studies that examine built environmental factors associated with life satisfaction among old people in developing countries, particularly those focused on Brazil, the aim of this study was to estimate the prevalence of life satisfaction among old adults residents in a Brazilian urban center and to investigate its association with individual characteristics and objective measures of the built environment. A household survey (N = 832) in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil (2008–2009) and a Systematic Social Observation (SSO) was used in this study. Life satisfaction was assessed through Self-Anchoring Ladder Scale, developed by Cantril, in 1965. Participants’ answers were categorized as satisfied (rungs 6–10) and dissatisfied (rungs 0–5). A Multilevel Poisson regression analysis with robust variance was performed. The prevalence of satisfaction with life was approximately 82%. Higher prevalence of life satisfaction was significantly associated with old people who reported higher incomes, higher religious participation, who practice physical activity and who perceive their health as good and very good. In contextual level, results showed that when the contextual features were adjusted separately by the individual characteristics they were no longer significant. The results also showed a lower prevalence of life satisfaction among those living in neighborhoods with higher physical disorder, even after adjusting for individual and other contextual characteristics. The present findings suggest that life satisfaction should be assessed whenever evaluating urban redevelopment programs designed to improve neighborhood characteristics, reducing physical disorder, especially among old adults.

Resumo O objetivo foi mapear evidências sobre a qualidade dos registros do Sistema de Informação sobre Mortalidade (SIM) por meio de revisão de escopo nacional com artigos publicados até abril de 2023 em cinco bases (PubMed, Embase, scopus, LILACS e SciELO). Excluíram-se estudos focados em causas específicas de óbito. Foram avaliadas dimensões como acessibilidade, clareza metodologica, cobertura, completitude, confiabilidade, consistencia, nao-duplicidade, oportunidade, validade e estudos de causas mal definidas/garbage codes.. Dos 33 artigos incluídos, observou-se melhoria geral da qualidade do SIM, com redução de 68,5% nos garbage codes (2000-2015). Contudo, persistem desigualdades regionais no SIM, com cobertura abaixo de 90% no Acre e Maranhão e pior desempenho nas regiões Norte e Nordeste. Um SIM robusto é essencial para estratégias de saúde pública voltadas à prevenção de mortes evitáveis.

Considering that urban environments may affect self-rated health through behavioral and psychosocial mechanisms, the aim of this study was to investigate the association between self-rated health and perceived urban environment characteristics among adults living in four Latin American cities. Data is from a population-based survey by Development Bank of Latin America, encompassing adults between 20 and 60 years old in Buenos Aires, Lima, Mexico City, and Panama City. Self-rated health was measured using a single question and the response options were categorized as poor and good. The explanatory variables were empirical Bayes estimates of self-reported area physical disorder, social disorder, access to services, and access to leisure spaces derived from the survey. The covariates were: individual age, sex, education, wealth index, and length of residency in the neighborhood; and an area social environment index. Multilevel logistic regressions with two levels (individual and sub-city areas) were fitted. Poor self-rated health was reported by 34.73% (95% CI: 33.17 to 36.29) of the participants and was associated with physical disorder (OR = 1.16 per SD; 95% CI: 1.02 to 1.32). Our findings suggest that public policies to promote population health should consider area urban environment factors, especially those associated with disorder.

We investigated the associations of social and built environment and demographic features of urban areas with self-rated health among adults living in four Latin American countries. We estimated multilevel models with harmonized data from 69,840 adults, nested in 262 sub-cities and 112 cities, obtained from the Salud Urbana en América Latina project. Poor self-rated health was inversely associated with services provision score at the sub-city-level and with social environment index at the city-level. We did not identify associations of built environment and demographic features with self-rated health. Approaches and policies to improve health in Latin American should be urban context-sensitive.