SummaryPrevious research shows significant health and mortality variations by residential context. While the socio-demographic factors behind this phenomenon are well recognized, the unequal distribution of environmental conditions within a society also plays an important role in health disparities. The proposed study will use self-rated health as a proxy for the general health status of participants, and investigate health variations in NAKO participants by residential contexts, with a focus upon regional, urban-rural, and intra-urban patterns. Combining NAKO individual data with contextual data, this study will apply multilevel analysis to identify environmental inequalities in health outcomes spatially and to determine the extent to which individual characteristics explain these environmental inequalities and which individual and contextual factors play a role in health variations. The findings in this study may support the analysis of environmental justice in Germany and efforts on policy intervention, urban planning, epidemiological research, awareness-raising in terms of reducing health inequities, as well as future longitudinal analyses of NAKO data.
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InstitutionsHumboldt-Universität Berlin, Helmholtz Zentrum München, Universität Bremen