Urban Ecology and Health in the Third World

This volume explores the factors in Third World cities that affect human biology and health.

Lawrence M. Schell (Edited by), Malcolm Smith (Edited by), Alan Bilsborough (Edited by)

9780521103053, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 19 March 2009

304 pages, 60 b/w illus.
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.7 cm, 0.45 kg

"One of the main strengths of the volume is that most contributors go beyond a simple urban-rural comparison to assess the effects of urbanization. A theme that runs through the book is the variation that exists in both urban and rural environments and the important effects that this variation has on health....The approach to urbanization taken by the contributors to this book is an important one for human biologists." Sara Stinson, American Journal of Physical Anthropology

This volume looks at the relationship between specific aspects of Third World cities and human health. Rapid and extensive urbanization of the less developed nations is perhaps the most dramatic demographic phenomenon of our times, but its impact on human biology is not well understood. Here, a cross-section of work is presented on this subject allowing human biologists, urban planners, public health workers and other specialists to assess our knowledge and the current approaches available to increase it. Contributions fall into two groups: studies of urban ecology including the social, economic and physical domains, and studies of biological responses to the urban environment. Health is not merely the absence of specific diseases, but is construed more broadly to include a wide range of biological parameters that are correlated with various states of sub-optimal health. These include patterns of child growth and development, frequencies of specific diseases, nutritional status, immunological characteristics and physiological parameters. This important volume will be of interest to a wide range of researchers and academics, including human biologists, anthropologists, healthcare professionals, human geographers, urban and regional planners, and economists.

1. Human biological approaches to the study of Third World urbanism
2. Social and cultural influences in the risk of cardiovascular disease in urban Brazil
3. The urban disadvantage in the developing world and the physical and mental growth of children
4. Differences in endocrine status associated with urban-rural patterns of growth and maturation in Bundi (Gende speaking) adolescents of Papua New Guinea
5. Nutritionally vulnerable households in the urban slum economy: a case study from Khulna, Bangladesh
6. Urban-rural differences in growth and diarrhoeal morbidity of Filipino infants
7. Child health and growth in urban South Africa
8. From countryside to town in Morocco: ecology, culture and public health
9. Urban-rural population research: a town like Alice
10. Selection for rural-to-urban migrants in Guatemala
11. Health and nutrition in Mixtec Indians
12. Urban health and ecology in Bunia, N-E Zaire, with special reference to the physical development of children
13. Food for thought: meeting a basic need for low income urban residents
14. Immunological parameters in north-east Arnhem Land Aborigines: consequences of changing settlement patterns and lifestyles
15. Amerindians and the price of modernization
16. Sex ratio determinants in Indian populations: studies at national, state and district levels
17. Polarization and depolarization in Africa
18. Urbanization in the Third World: health policy implications
Index.

Subject Areas: Human biology [PSX]