Zhang Tao
School of Public Administration, Macao Polytechnic Institute, Macao, China.
Popul Health Metr. 2017 Sep 29;15(1):35. doi: 10.1186/s12963-017-0152-2.
With rapid economy growth, the prevalence of obesity, and related chronic diseases, has increased greatly. Although this has been widely recognized, little attention has been paid to the influence of built environment and economic growth, particularly for developing countries. The main purpose of this study is to investigate the potential relationship between the prevalence of diabetes and the built environment while considering the effects of socioeconomic change in China.
Three nationally representative samples are constructed and employed mainly based on various sources of data, such as the China National Nutrition and Health Survey, World Health Organization, and China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Survey in 2013. The explanatory variables representing the built environment and influential factors include the health outcomes, economic indicators, local health facilities, regional dummies, and demographic features. OLS, robust regressions, and a set of binary choice models are used to estimate the possible relationship.
It is suggested that the prevalence of diabetes is associated with both the broader built environment and individual economic factors in China. China's sharp economic growth in the recent decades has greatly increased the prevalence of obesity and diabetes, when also considering other influential factors.
Although the results can not specify causal mechanism, some useful results can be clearly discovered and subsequently a few important policy implications can be provided for the sustainable and healthy development of China's urban planning or built environment.
随着经济的快速增长，肥胖及相关慢性病的患病率大幅上升。尽管这一点已得到广泛认可，但人们很少关注建筑环境与经济增长的影响，尤其是对发展中国家而言。本研究的主要目的是在中国考虑社会经济变化影响的同时，调查糖尿病患病率与建筑环境之间的潜在关系。
主要基于各种数据源构建并使用了三个具有全国代表性的样本，如2013年中国国家营养与健康调查、世界卫生组织以及中国健康与养老追踪调查。代表建筑环境和影响因素的解释变量包括健康结果、经济指标、当地卫生设施、区域虚拟变量和人口特征。使用普通最小二乘法、稳健回归以及一组二元选择模型来估计可能的关系。
研究表明，在中国，糖尿病患病率与更广泛的建筑环境和个人经济因素都有关联。在考虑其他影响因素的情况下，中国近几十年来的经济快速增长极大地增加了肥胖和糖尿病的患病率。
虽然结果无法明确因果机制，但可以清楚地发现一些有用的结果，随后可为中国城市规划或建筑环境的可持续健康发展提供一些重要的政策启示。
