Social Factors and Cardiovascular Health in Buenos Aires

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant) Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of death world wide. Although traditionally thought of as diseases of "industrialization", there is growing recognition of the importance of cardiovascular diseases and cardiovascular risk factors such as obesity, high blood pressure, and smoking as major contributors to morbidity and mortality in developing countries, including Argentina. Nevertheless, epidemiologic studies of factors associated with cardiovascular risk in developing countries remain extremely rare. Identifying factors associated with cardiovascular risk may help guide policy or may suggest vulnerable groups which should be targeted for intervention. In industrialized countries there has been growing awareness of the role that features of living environments, including characteristics of residential environments, may play in the development of cardiovascular risk factors. However, information on the social and geographic patterning of the cardiovascular disease epidemic in countries like Argentina is virtually non-existent. Using death certificate and survey data from Buenos Aires, one of the largest urban areas in Latin America, we propose to investigate the geographic patterning of cardiovascular risk and the socioeconomic factors associated with this patterning. The specific aims of this proposal are: (1) To describe the spatial patterning of small-area variations in cardiovascular disease mortality in the city of Buenos Aires.(2) To investigate associations of area socioeconomic characteristics with cardiovascular disease mortality in the city of Buenos Aires. (3) To investigate spatial variations in the prevalence of obesity, smoking, self-reported hypertension, and physical activity in the city of Buenos Aires; and (4) To investigate associations of both area characteristics and personal socioeconomic indicators with the prevalence of cardiovascular risk factors. This research will be carried out in collaboration with Hugo Spinelli of the Universidad de Lanus in Buenos Aires, Argentina as an extension of NIH grant R01 HL071759-01 (Diez Roux, PI, June 2,2003-June 1 2007).