Geografia e saúde coletiva: análise socioespacial da relação entre áreas livres e taxas de mortalidade por doenças cardiovasculares em Juiz de Fora/MG

Abstract

This research aims to bring a contribution of Geography to the field of Collective Health, valuing a more quantitative and systematized way to evaluate the benefits of Free Areas for urban populations. This study aims to verify the hypothesis of a significant association between the existence of urban public free areas and the occurrence of mortality from cardiovascular diseases in the urban regions of the city of Juiz de Fora. The data from the Unified Health System Mortality Information System (SIM - SUS) from 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012 were used. From these, we extracted the average of the five-year period that was transformed into rates (per 100,000 inhabitants). and were also applied to the Direct Method of Standardization and data weighting by the Local Empirical Bayesian Estimator. As exposure variable, the percentage of Free Areas was used. Associations were controlled by demographic, age, sex, socioeconomic characteristics, basic sanitation and access to SUS Basic Health Units. For this analysis we used methods of Spatial Analysis in health. It was used as Geographic Information System (GIS) the software TerraView® 4.2.0; For statistical tests, SPSS 15.0 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, United States) was used. The results indicated that there was no significant association between mortality rates and the presence of free areas in the Juiz de Fora Urban Regions (UK) and that such death rates are significantly associated with the socioeconomic conditions of the UK. The results interpreted in the light of the concept of used territory of Milton Santos (1994) pointed to great social and economic inequalities in the urban area of Juiz de Fora. It was noticed that social disparities influence an unequal distribution of health conditions in the urban space.