International Journal of Public Health

BackgroundLittle is known about the association between household solid fuel use and sarcopenia risk. Using a nationally representative survey, we investigated the association between solid fuel used for heating and cooking and sarcopenia risk among middle-aged and older Chinese adults. MethodsWe leveraged two waves of data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS); 12,723 participants aged [≥] 45 years from 28 provinces across China were enrolled in 2011. Sarcopenia s...

ObjectivesThe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic continues to pose profound challenges on society. Governments around the world have managed to mitigate its spread through strategies including social distancing; however, this may result in the adoption of sedentary lifestyle. This study aimed to investigate: 1) physical activity (PA) levels, sedentary behavior (SB) and sleep among young adults during COVID-19 epidemic, and 2) the change in these behaviors before and during the pandemic...

Road traffic crashes are a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in large cities. Cities including New York City (NYC) in the United States (US) have implemented a suite of interventions to reduce road traffic crashes. Leading pedestrian intervals (LPIs) are a low-cost physical environmental intervention premised to reduce vehicle-pedestrian crashes by providing pedestrians a head-start over the turning vehicular traffic. Using a spatial ecological panel design, we assessed the impact of LPIs...

PurposeTo examine: (i) depression as a mediator in effects of sleep duration and quality on life satisfaction (LS), (ii) source of endogeneity in self-reported data on sleep, and (iii) predictive power of sleep duration and quality on LS. MethodsPanel data of 22,674 observations from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Survey (2015 & 2018) was used. Sleep was assessed with self-reported duration and quality. Depression was measured by the 10-question version of the Center for Epidemiol...

Cardiometabolic diseases commonly rise with market-integration, industrialization, and urbanization, yet the direct role of physical activity remains debated. We collected accelerometry, health, and interview data from 1075 Orang Asli adults in Peninsular Malaysia, who currently span a wide range from rural, non-industrial to urban, industrialized lifestyles. More urban lifestyles were associated with reduced physical activity and worse cardiometabolic health. However, physical activity mediated...

PurposeThe COVID-19 pandemic has had profound and multifaceted impacts on children and adolescents, exposing and deepening pre-existing inequalities while creating unique health, social, and educational challenges. In response to the limited evidence-based knowledge available, the SEROCoV-KIDS study was launched in 2021 as a prospective cohort and biobank to assess the pandemics effects on youth health and well-being. It focuses on the general population of Geneva, Switzerland, as well as subgro...

Background: Smoking impairs lung immune functions and damages upper airways, increasing risks of contracting and severity of infectious diseases. Methods: We searched PubMed and Embase for studies published from January 1-May 25, 2020. We included studies reporting smoking behavior of COVID-19 patients and progression of disease, including death. We used a random effects meta-analysis and used meta-regression and lowess regressions to examine relationships in the data. Results: We identified 47 ...

BackgroundPopulation is rapidly ageing globally, and alcohol consumption among older adults has increased in recent years. Alcohol consumption is known to be socioeconomically patterned, but little is known about how these socioeconomic differences evolve as individuals age and over the transition into statutory retirement. ObjectiveWe aimed to examine changes in socioeconomic differences in drinking patterns during a 22-year follow-up among retiring employees. MethodsWe analyzed changes in dr...

Cross-national research on health trajectories requires harmonised measures that are valid and comparable. However, measurement scales often differ between cohorts in item content and cultural context. We present a structured framework to harmonise mental health measures, using depression and anxiety symptoms across two longitudinal cohorts that used different self-report measures with heterogeneous item codings: ELSA-UK and ELSA-Brasil. Data were collected before, during, and after the COVID-1...

In addition to its potential contribution to reaching climate targets, cycling may generate substantial population-level health benefits through the physical activity it requires. Due to the lack of nationally representative mobility data, the health impact of current levels of cycling is still unknown for France. Relying on a health impact assessment framework and using recent nationally-representative data on mobility, we assessed the health and related economic benefits of cycling in 2018-201...

This study anonymously screened 13,332 individuals worldwide for psychological symptoms related to Corona virus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic from March 29th to April 14th, 2020. A total of n=12,817 responses were considered valid with responses from 12 featured countries and five WHO regions. Female gender, pre-existing psychiatric condition, and prior exposure to trauma were identified as notable risk factors, whereas optimism, ability to share concerns with family and friends like usual, p...

Sleep is essential for childrens health and development, yet sleep problems are common worldwide. Comfort items such as soft toys or blankets are widely used to promote independent sleep, but their effects have not been evaluated in a randomised controlled trial (RCT). The REST trial emerged from a child-led citizen-science study (The Kids Trial) where children co-created and designed the trial. Therefore, this paper had two aims, to assess whether sleeping with a comfort item affected childrens...

BackgroundMask wearing contributes to the reduction of transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). In Switzerland, compulsory use of masks was introduced in indoor public spaces and later in schools. In the canton of Zurich, masks were introduced for secondary school children (grades 7-9) from November 2020, and for primary school children (grades 4-6) from February 2021- along with other protective measures against SARS-CoV-2. This study explored perceptions to...

Households that burn biomass in inefficient open fires - a practice that results in $1.6 trillion in global damages from health impacts and climate-altering emissions yearly - are often unable to access cleaner alternatives, like gas, which is widely available but unaffordable, or electricity, which is unattainable for many due to insufficient supply and reliability of electricity services. Governments are often reluctant to make gas affordable. We argue that condemnation of all fossil fuel subs...

Pandemic coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) may lead to significant mental health stresses, potentially with modifiable risk factors. To determine the presence of and magnitude of associations between baseline associations and anxiety and depression in the US general population, we performed an internet-based cross-sectional survey of an age-, sex-, and race-stratified representative sample from the US general population. Degrees of anxiety, depression, and loneliness were assessed using the 7-...

Environmental noise is a significant public health concern, ranking among the top environmental risks to citizens health and quality of life. Despite various studies exploring the effects of atmospheric pollution on mental health, spatial investigations into the effects of noise pollution have been notably absent. This study addresses this gap by investigating the association between noise pollution (from road and rail networks) and depression for the first time in England and first explores loc...

BackgroundThere is a great deal of uncertainty concerning which contexts would be safe for returning to school and about individual criteria that would reduce contact between the infected and susceptible people in the school setting. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to estimate the prevalence of infection by SARS-CoV-2 in students and school staff; and to identify predictors of infection, including both municipal epidemiological indicators and individual variables reported by the partici...

BackgroundLongitudinal evidence on the association between temperature fluctuations and psychological wellbeing remains limited, particularly in ageing populations of Southeast Asia. This study examines how heat exposure affects multiple wellbeing outcomes among older adults in Thailand. MethodsWe linked longitudinal data from 16,002 observations in the Health, Aging, and Retirement in Thailand (HART) study (2015-2023) with province-level meteorological data. Using a multilevel mixed-effects mo...

IntroductionClimate change is expected to alter daily patterns of sleep, sedentary behaviour and physical activity, yet empirically grounded projections across the full 24-hour movement spectrum are lacking. This study estimated how projected future warming may alter 24-hour movement behaviour patterns in adults. MethodsA Monte Carlo simulation framework estimated temperature-dependent distributions of daily movement behaviour duration using data from 368 adults in the Annual Rhythms in Adults ...

BackgroundAdolescent mental health represents a global public health crisis, yet traditional surveillance methods lack the scalability and predictive power needed for effective early identification. This study aimed to develop and validate a machine learning framework to predict multiple psychosomatic health complaints (MPHC), a key indicator of mental distress, using large-scale, multi-national population survey data. MethodsData were drawn from the 2017-2018 Health Behaviour in School-aged Ch...