Neighborhood environment, self-rated health and quality of life in Latin America

Abstract

To conduct a systematic review examining the associations between neighborhood environments and self-rated health (SRH) and health-related quality of life (HR-QOL) in the urban context of Latin America. We conducted a structured search of quantitative studies in three bibliographic databases published in Spanish, English, Portuguese and French from January 1990 to December 2015. We restricted the search to studies conducted in Latin-American cities with one million and more inhabitants. Eleven studies were finally included in the analysis. Ten were cross-sectional studies and one was a cohort follow-up study. Two studies found positive associations between accessibility to parks and HR-QOL. One study found that high neighborhood social capital was positively associated with SRH. Neighborhood socioeconomic status was positively associated with both HR-QOL and SRH in two studies. A walkable neighborhood was positively associated with SRH in two studies. Three studies included attributes related with neighborhood security perception and road safety, with higher scores of HR-QOL, both in the physical and mental dimensions, while high levels of street noise were negatively associated. Narrowness and slope of streets were negatively associated with SRH. No association was found between the perception of neighborhood security and SRH. The results of this systematic review show that several studies conducted in Latin America have found significant associations between neighborhood environment and SRH and HRQOL. However, the relatively small number of studies and the heterogeneity among them require further studies to better understand this topic in the region.

Keywords: Health-related quality of life; self-rated health; social capital; urban environment; urban health.