Equality and poverty: views from managers and professionals from public services and household heads in the Belo Horizonte Metropolitan Area, Brazil

Association between sanitary toilets and health poverty vulnerability among rural western Chinese adults aged 45 years and older: A cross-sectional study

This study aimed to investigate the association between sanitary toilets and health poverty vulnerability among rural western Chinese adults aged 45 years and older. Using data from the 'Rural Household Health Inquiry Survey' conducted in 2022, a three-stage feasible generalized least squares method was employed to calculate health poverty vulnerability. Propensity score matching (PSM) and mediation effect analysis were used to assess the association between sanitary toilets and health poverty vulnerability among rural western Chinese adults aged 45 years and older and the mechanisms underlying this impact. This study revealed that the use of sanitary toilets was significantly associated with decreased health poverty vulnerability in adults over 45 years of age. Heterogeneity analysis revealed that this effect was more pronounced among males (β = -0.0375, P<0.05), those aged 60-74 years (β = -0.0476, P<0.05), and households with middle income (β = -0.0590, P<0.01). Mediation effect analysis identified total household income (a×b = -0.0233, P<0.05), household size (a×b = -0.0181, P<0.01), number of household laborers (a×b = -0.0107, P<0.01), and registered poor households (a×b = -0.0081, P<0.01) as the mediating factors between sanitary toilets and health poverty vulnerability. The provision of sanitary toilets has been instrumental in mitigating health-related poverty among middle-aged and elderly people residing in rural areas. By improving household livelihood capital, the vulnerability of these individuals to health-related poverty can be significantly reduced.

A study of poverty alleviation strategies for sustainable development: A scientometric analysis

Purpose

The present study aims to investigate the current and future trends in poverty alleviation strategies for sustainable development, show the gaps and propose the way forward for future research.

Methods

This research covers four decades from 1981 to 2023. We identified a corpus of 5,982 articles from the Scopus database using the bibliometric and scientometric methods. We excluded 653 to remain, with 5,329 fulfilling the conditions of non-duplicates, suitable authorship, and conform content. These documents include articles, reviews, journals, books and other publications in our study field. With the help of VOS viewer and R-Studio software, we have performed two significant tests: performance analysis and science mapping.

Results

Despite the poverty alleviation strategies for sustainable development that emerged in 1981, it has experienced steady growth from 2000 onwards and has reached the pick in 2022 with 316 publications. The most prolific countries are China, the USA and the UK. At the same time, the most contributing authors are Liu Y, Wang Y, and Lily, both from China and Ravaillion, M from Australia. They have discussed more about poverty alleviation and poverty reduction. Furthermore, we realize that the household, remittance and land use have no connection with any item besides the government and IMF.

Conclusion

We have underlined the countries and authors that contributed the most and revealed the challenges in poverty alleviation via thematic mapping. Therefore, we recommend that future researchers, while keeping an eye on Africa, livelihoods, gender inequality, and India, focus more on poverty alleviation, China, and sustainable development. Special attention also must focus on the household, remittance, land use, government, and IMF and find ways to improve their role in poverty alleviation strategies for sustainable development.

Global Health Equity Requires Global Equity

Many global health challenges are characterized by the inequitable patterning of their health and economic consequences, which are etched along the lines of pre-existing inequalities in resources, power, and opportunity. These links require us to reconsider how we define global health equity, and what we consider as most consequential in its pursuit. In this article, we discuss the extent to which improving underlying global equity is an essential prerequisite to global health equity. We conclude that if we are to improve global health equity, there is a need to focus more on foundational—rather than proximal—causes of ill health and propose ways in which this can be achieved.

Contextual and individual factors associated with depressive symptoms in Latin American residents from eleven cities: Multilevel analysis

Depression is one of the most prevalent mental illnesses in the world. Its associated factors have been scarcely studied in the Latin American population. Our aim was to determine the contextual and individual factors associated with depressive symptoms (DS) in residents of 11 Latin American cities according to the 2019 CAF Survey (ECAF, acronym in Spanish). A multilevel analysis was performed to identify individual and contextual factors associated with DS. DS were measured by the short version of the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-D-10). Of the 10,206 participants, 42.0% had DS in the week prior to the survey. Regarding the individual factors studied, women (OR = 1.81, 95% CI: 1.65-1.99), smokers (OR = 1.30, 95% CI: 1.16-1.45), obese, junk food eaters more than twice a week, single people, and a greater number of people in the household were associated with greater probabilities of having DS. On the other hand, a secondary (OR = 0.77; 95% CI: 0.67-0.88) or superior educational level (OR = 0.58; 95% CI: 0.50-0.68) were associated as protective factors. Regarding contextual factors, higher contamination levels (OR = 1.07, 95% CI: 1.01-1.13) were associated with DS. Our study reports associations between individual and environmental factors and DS in residents of Latin America. These findings will allow the adoption of the necessary measures for decision-making and research to face this growing problem in developing countries.