North America

Developing a working and inclusive definition of access to eye care.
Elsevier,

Health Care Today in the United States, 2023, Pages 141-170

This chapter advances goals 3 and 5 by covering the unique health issues and vulnerabilities of women.
Food insecurity, defined as insufficient access to nutritious foods, is a social determinant of health that may underpin health disparities in the US. American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) individuals experience many health inequities that may be related to food insecurity, but no systematic analyses of the existing evidence have been published. Thus, the objective of this scoping review was to assess the literature on food insecurity among AI/AN individuals and communities, with a focus on the prevalence of food insecurity and its relations to sociodemographic, nutrition, and health characteristics. Based on the review, recommendations for future research were derived, which include fundamental validity testing, better representation of AI/AN individuals in federal or local food security reports, and consideration of cultural contexts when selecting methodological approaches. Advances in AI/AN food insecurity research could yield tangible benefits to ongoing initiatives aimed at increasing access to traditional foods, improving food environments on reservations and homelands, and supporting food sovereignty.
Most disease-gene association methods do not account for gene-gene interactions, even though these play a crucial role in complex, polygenic diseases like Alzheimer's disease (AD). To discover new genes whose interactions may contribute to pathology, we introduce GeneEMBED. This approach compares the functional perturbations induced in gene interaction network neighborhoods by coding variants from disease versus healthy subjects. In two independent AD cohorts of 5,169 exomes and 969 genomes, GeneEMBED identified novel candidates.
This chapter advances Goals 7, 16, and 10 by exploring the tensions between democracy and procedural justice across two diverse case studies from Canada (wind energy) and the United States (oil and gas). The authors identify a common scalar mismatch between the interests and power of those exercising democracy at provincial/state levels and those living locally and impacted by development—straining to have their voices heard.
This content aligns with Goal 10: Reduced Inequalities by exploring how social factors such as access to housing, employment, education, and healthcare contributed to the inequitable impacts of COVID-19.
This Article supports SDGs 3 and 16 by measuring the rate of heart transplantation among Black and White waitlist candidates. The findings suggest that transplantation rates, as well as the rate of delisting for death or clinical deterioration, has worsened for Black candidates compared with White candidates, and that the causes for this disparity require further study.
This chapter advances the UN SDG goals 7, 10, and 16 by suggesting that energy does not only need to be democratized but ultimately, needs to be decolonized from the processes that place fossil fuels in the service of settler capitalism, rather than Diné sovereignty. Such a move might enable movements toward energy justice.
Indigenous peoples in Canada are at increased risk of cardiovascular disease and current research suggests that gaps most prominently present as delays in receiving care and as poorer long-term outcomes.
With the aging global population, the relationship between older people and their residential environments is increasingly important. This relationship is based on the match between the individual characteristics of a person, their needs and expectations, and the characteristics of their environment. By creating access to various health improvement factors and exposure to various risk factors, the conditions under which an individual ages can be modified. This helps to accelerate or decelerate the process of incapacitation that individuals undergo as they age. This can also reduce or reinforce socio-spatial inequalities, which underlie the preponderant role of territory and spatial policies in the prevention and promotion of healthy aging. This chapters supports the process for developing the Decade of Healthy Ageing (2020 – 2030) aligned to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG3).

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