The built environment is more predictive of cardiometabolic health than other aspects of lifestyle in two rapidly transitioning Indigenous populations
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View abstract on PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.Urban infrastructure and material wealth, not diet, most strongly predict cardiometabolic health in transitioning Indigenous populations. These findings highlight the built environment
Area Of Science
- Anthropology
- Public Health
- Sociology
Background
- Indigenous and subsistence societies face rising cardiometabolic diseases due to urbanization and market integration.
- Understanding health drivers is crucial for policy development in diverse socio-environmental contexts.
- Comparative studies with integrated data are needed to identify generalized health predictors.
Purpose Of The Study
- To develop and test lifestyle scales in two distinct Indigenous populations undergoing rapid societal change.
- To identify which lifestyle factors most effectively predict cardiometabolic health outcomes.
- To assess the generalizability of lifestyle-health associations across diverse cultural and ecological settings.
Main Methods
- Developed nine lifestyle scales (urban infrastructure, market integration, acculturation) for Turkana (Kenya) and Orang Asli (Malaysia) populations.
- Utilized factor analysis to identify salient lifestyle dimensions without supervision.
- Assessed the predictive power of lifestyle scales on 16 cardiometabolic health measures, including sex-stratified analyses.
Main Results
- Urban infrastructure and market-derived wealth were stronger predictors of cardiometabolic health than diet, mobility, or acculturation.
- Results were highly consistent across both Turkana and Orang Asli populations and between sexes.
- Factor analysis revealed two key lifestyle axes: built environment and diet, which vary independently and impact health differently.
Conclusions
- The built environment, encompassing local infrastructure, is a more potent predictor of cardiometabolic health than proximate factors like diet in transitioning societies.
- Generalizable insights into cardiometabolic health drivers can be gained from comparable, integrated anthropological and health data.
- Built environment may act as a proxy for physical activity, stress, and market integration duration, influencing long-term health outcomes.
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