Deliverable 2.1 – Knowledge Hub is a public deliverable of type ‘OTHER’. Specifically, it consists of a section on the project website containing a downloadable booklet. Both constitute the tangible output of the literature review foreseen in the framework of the development of WP2 – Identifying and measuring the association between urban environment features and NCDs. The main objective of this document is to describe the location and characteristics of the deliverable.
The deliverable can be found at https://horus-urbanhealth.eu/knowledge-hub/. The section provides an overview of methodological and design aspects of the review of observational epidemiological studies analysing the relationship between the urban environment and the prevalence or incidence of Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) – specifically, Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM) and Cardiovascular Disease (CVD) – and associated risk behaviours. It also highlights some key findings from the studies.
The booklet contains a synthesis of 31 publications reviewed, focusing on Background, Objectives, Design and Results. The reports are structured according to whether the main outcome of the study is a health or behavioural outcome.
The included studies have basically four typologies:
Longitudinal studies of
1) Health outcomes
2) Behavioural outcomes
And cross-sectional prevalence studies of
3) Health condition
4) NCD – associated behaviours
Longitudinal studies may define as exposure a continuous time – varying variable or a binary well-defined intervention, in which case it is usually presented as a quasi-experimental study. All included studies may be based on clustered data or individual-level data, with a prospective – cohort – or retrospective – data from secondary sources, such as health records – design approach.
Deliverable 2.1 will be updated and improved periodically until the end of the project, in order to incorporate the most recent evidence and other papers of interest.