Majid Ezzati's research while affiliated with Imperial College London and other places
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Publications (636)
Knowledge of excess deaths after tropical cyclones is critical to understanding their impacts, directly relevant to policies on preparedness and mitigation. We applied an ensemble of 16 Bayesian models to 40.7 million U.S. deaths and a comprehensive record of 179 tropical cyclones over 32 years (1988-2019) to estimate short-term all-cause excess de...
Advances in computer vision, driven by deep learning, allows for the inference of environmental pollution and its potential sources from images. The spatial and temporal generalisability of image-based pollution models is crucial in their real-world application, but is currently understudied, particularly in low-income countries where infrastructur...
Unlabelled:
Urbanization and inequalities are two of the major policy themes of our time, intersecting in large cities where social and economic inequalities are particularly pronounced. Large scale street-level images are a source of city-wide visual information and allow for comparative analyses of multiple cities. Computer vision methods based...
Cities in the developing world are expanding rapidly, and undergoing changes to their roads, buildings, vegetation, and other land use characteristics. Timely data are needed to ensure that urban change enhances health, wellbeing and sustainability. We present and evaluate a novel unsupervised deep clustering method to classify and characterise the...
Background:
London has outperformed smaller towns and rural areas in terms of life expectancy increase. Our aim was to investigate life expectancy change at very-small-area level, and its relationship with house prices and their change.
Methods:
We performed a hyper-resolution spatiotemporal analysis from 2002 to 2019 for 4835 London Lower-layer...
Optimal growth and development in childhood and adolescence is crucial for lifelong
health and well-being1–6
. Here we used data from 2,325 population-based studies, with
measurements of height and weight from 71 million participants, to report the height
and body-mass index (BMI) of children and adolescents aged 5–19 years on the basis
of rural an...
Millions of households in rich and poor countries alike are at risk of being unwilfully displaced from their homes or the land on which they live (i.e., lack secure tenure), and the urban poor are most vulnerable. Improving housing tenure security may be an intervention to improve housing and environmental conditions and reduce urban health inequal...
Growing cities in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) experience high levels of ambient air pollution. However, sparse long-term city-wide air pollution exposure data limits policy mitigation efforts and assessment of the health and climate effects in growing cities. In the first study of its kind in West Africa, we developed high resolution spatiotemporal la...
Objective
To assess the recent trends in prevalence and management of hypertension in China, nationally and by population subgroups.
Design
Six rounds of a national survey, China.
Setting
China Chronic Disease and Risk Factors Surveillance, 2004-18.
Participants
642 523 community dwelling adults aged 18-69 years (30 501 in 2004, 47 353 in 2007,...
Objective
To identify what dimensions of socioeconomic position (SEP) are most closely associated with childhood obesity in Finland, leveraging population-wide data among the whole child population aged 2–17 years in Finland.
Design
Registry-based study.
Setting
Data from several administrative registries linked on individual level covering the w...
Background
Emerging evidence links outdoor air pollution and declined renal function but the relationship between household air pollution and renal function is poorly understood.
Methods
Using cross-sectional data from the multi-provincial INTERMAP-China Prospective Study, we collected blood samples and questionnaire information on stove use and s...
The urban environment influences human health, safety and wellbeing. Cities in Africa are growing faster than other regions but have limited data to guide urban planning and policies. Our aim was to use smart sensing and analytics to characterise the spatial patterns and temporal dynamics of features of the urban environment relevant for health, li...
The interactions of individuals with city neighbourhoods is determined, in part, by the perceived quality of urban environments. Perceived neighbourhood quality is a core component of urban vitality, influencing social cohesion, sense of community, safety, activity and mental health of residents. Large-scale assessment of perceptions of neighbourho...
Universal access to safe drinking water is essential to population health and well-being, as recognized in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). To develop targeted policies which improve urban access to improved water and ensure equity, there is the need to understand the spatial heterogeneity in drinking water sources and the factors underlyin...
Recognition of the importance of nutrition during middle childhood (age 5–9 years) and adolescence (age 10–19 years) is increasing, particularly in the context of global food insecurity and rising overweight and obesity rates. Until now, policy makers have been slow to respond to rapidly changing patterns of malnutrition across these age groups. On...
High spatial resolution information on urban air pollution levels is unavailable in many areas globally, partially due to the high input data needs of existing estimation approaches. We introduced a computer vision method to estimate annual means for air pollution levels from street-level images. We used annual mean estimates of NO2 and PM2.5 conce...
Noise pollution is a growing environmental health concern in rapidly urbanizing sub-Saharan African (SSA) cities. However, limited city-wide data constitutes a major barrier to investigating health impacts as well as implementing environmental policy in this growing population. As such, in this first of its kind study in West Africa, we measured, m...
Background
Myocardial infarction mortality varies substantially within high-income countries. There is limited guidance on what interventions—including primary and secondary prevention, or improvement of care pathways and quality—can reduce myocardial infarction mortality. Our aim was to understand the contributions of incidence (event rate), pre-h...
The consumption of packaged water in Ghana has grown significantly in recent years. By 2017, “sachet water”—machine-sealed 500ml plastic bags of drinking water—was consumed by 33% of Ghanaian households. Reliance on sachet water has previously been associated with the urban poor, yet recent evidence suggests a customer base which crosses socioecono...
Background
Among high-income countries, Japan has a low prevalence of obesity, but little is understood about subnational trends and variations in body mass index (BMI), largely owing to the lack of data from representative samples of prefectures. We aimed to examine long-term trends and distributions of adult BMI at the prefecture level in Japan f...
Background:
Anaemia causes health and economic harms. The prevalence of anaemia in women aged 15-49 years, by pregnancy status, is indicator 2.2.3 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and the aim of halving the anaemia prevalence in women of reproductive age by 2030 is an extension of the 2025 global nutrition targets endorsed by the World Hea...
High-spatial-resolution air quality (AQ) mapping is important for identifying pollution sources to facilitate local action. Some of the most populated cities in the world are not equipped with the infrastructure required to monitor AQ levels on the ground and must rely on other sources, such as satellite derived estimates, to monitor AQ. Current sa...
The relationship between exposure to household air pollution (HAP) from solid fuel use and cognition remains poorly understood. Among 401 older adults in peri-urban northern China enrolled in the INTERMAP-China Prospective Study, we estimated the associations between exposure to HAP and z-standardized domain-specific and overall cognitive scores fr...
Optimal health and development from preconception to adulthood are crucial for human flourishing and the formation of human capital. The Nurturing Care Framework, as adapted to age 20 years, conceptualises the major influences during periods of development from preconception, through pregnancy, childhood, and adolescence that affect human capital....
Background
Due to the adverse health effects of air pollution, researchers have advocated for personal exposure measurements whereby individuals carry portable monitors in order to better characterise and understand the sources of people's pollution exposure.
Objectives
The aim of this systematic review is to assess the differences in the magnitud...
Importance:
Tropical cyclones have a devastating effect on society, but a comprehensive assessment of their association with cause-specific mortality over multiple years of study is lacking.
Objective:
To comprehensively evaluate the association of county-level tropical cyclone exposure and death rates from various causes in the US.
Design, set...
Most countries have made little progress in achieving the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target 3.4, which calls for a reduction in premature mortality from non-communicable diseases (NCDs) by a third from 2015 to 2030. In this Health Policy paper, we synthesise the evidence related to interventions that can reduce premature mortality from the...
Urban air pollution is a public health challenge in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). However, LMICs lack adequate air quality (AQ) monitoring infrastructure. A persistent challenge has been our inability to estimate AQ accurately in LMIC cities, which hinders emergency preparedness and risk mitigation. Deep learning-based models that map s...
Background: Industrialised countries had varied responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, which may lead to different death tolls from COVID-19 and other diseases.
Methods: We applied an ensemble of 16 Bayesian probabilistic models to vital statistics data to estimate the number of weekly deaths if the pandemic had not occurred for 40 industrialised coun...
Although a great deal of research work has been done by social scientists on walkability and playability, the focus to a large extent has been on the global north. Research work on the urban built environment and children’s play has not engaged Africa in general and Ghana in particular. More importantly, there is limited evidence of policies in ter...
Millions of households in rich and poor countries alike are at risk of being unwilfully displaced from their homes or the land on which they live (i.e., lack secure tenure), and the urban poor are most vulnerable. Improving housing tenure security may be an intervention to improve housing and environmental conditions and reduce urban health inequal...
Objective
Countries in sub-Saharan Africa suffer the highest rates of child mortality worldwide. Urban areas tend to have lower mortality than rural areas, but these comparisons likely mask large within-city inequalities. We aimed to estimate rates of under-five mortality (U5M) at the neighbourhood level for Ghana’s Greater Accra Metropolitan Area...
In communities with household solid fuel use, transitioning to clean stoves/fuels often results in only moderate reductions in fine particulate matter (PM2.5) exposures; the chemical composition of those exposures may help explain why. We collected personal exposure (men and women) and outdoor PM2.5 samples in villages in three Chinese provinces (S...
Acute myocardial infarction (AMI) poses a serious disease burden in China, but studies on small-area characteristics of AMI incidence are lacking. We therefore examined temporal trends and geographic variations in AMI incidence at the township level in Beijing. In this cross-sectional analysis, 259,830 AMI events during 2007–2018 from the Beijing C...
Background
Body-mass index (BMI) and blood pressure (BP) levels are rising in sub-Saharan African cities, particularly among women. However, there is very limited information on how much they vary within cities, which could inform targeted and equitable health policies. Our study aimed to analyse spatial variations in BMI and BP for adult women at...
Background
Diabetes leads to a wide range of established vascular and metabolic complications that has resulted in the implementation of diverse prevention programmes across high-income countries. Diabetes has also been associated with an increased risk of a broader set of conditions including cancers, liver disease, and common infections. We aimed...
Background
Since 2013, Hong Kong has sustained the world's highest life expectancy at birth—a key indicator of population health. The reasons behind this achievement remain poorly understood but are of great relevance to both rapidly developing and high-income regions. Here, we aim to compare factors behind Hong Kong's survival advantage over long-...
Spatially varying baseline data can help identify and prioritise actions directed to determinants of intra-urban health inequalities. Twenty-seven years (1990–2016) of cause-specific mortality data in British Columbia, Canada were linked to three demographic data sources. Bayesian small area estimation models were used to estimate life expectancy (...
Background: Industrialised countries had varied responses to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, and how they adapted to new situations and knowledge since it began. These differences in preparedness and policy may lead to different death tolls from COVID-19 as well as other diseases.
Methods: We applied an ensemble of 16 Bayesian pro...
Background
High-resolution data for how mortality and longevity have changed in England, UK are scarce. We aimed to estimate trends from 2002 to 2019 in life expectancy and probabilities of death at different ages for all 6791 middle-layer super output areas (MSOAs) in England.
Methods
We performed a high-resolution spatiotemporal analysis of civi...
Background
Estimates of the burden of cardio-metabolic risk factors in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) rely on relative risks (RRs) from non-LAC countries. Whether these RRs apply to LAC remains unknown.
Methods
We pooled LAC cohorts. We estimated RRs per unit of exposure to body mass index (BMI), systolic blood pressure (SBP), fasting plasm...
Background:
Limited data suggest that household air pollution from cooking and heating with solid fuel (i.e., coal and biomass) stoves may contribute to the development of hypertension and vascular damage.
Methods:
Using mixed-effects regression models, we investigated the associations of household air pollution with blood pressure (BP) and vasc...
Background
Consistent and comparable health information across prefectures is necessary for monitoring progress in improving population health and reducing geographic health disparities in Japan. We aimed to examine long-term trends and variations in adult body mass index (BMI) by prefecture.
Methods
We obtained a total sample of 233,988 males and...
BACKGROUND AND AIM: Ambient air pollution is a growing public health concern in sub-Saharan African (SSA) cities. Yet, effective air quality management is hampered by limited data and modeling of spatial trends. METHODS: We measured outdoor weekly gravimetric (filter-based) concentrations of PM2.5 at 146 locations in a city-wide measurement campaig...
Background
The health of populations living in extreme poverty has been a long-standing focus of global development efforts, and continues to be a priority during the Sustainable Development Goal era. However, there has not been a systematic attempt to quantify the magnitude and causes of the burden in this specific population for almost two decade...
Background
Hypertension can be detected at the primary health-care level and low-cost treatments can effectively control hypertension. We aimed to measure the prevalence of hypertension and progress in its detection, treatment, and control from 1990 to 2019 for 200 countries and territories.
Methods
We used data from 1990 to 2019 on people aged 30...
Economic and urban development in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) may be shifting the dominant air pollution sources in cities from biomass to road traffic. Considered as a marker for traffic-related air pollution in cities, we conducted a city-wide measurement of NOx levels in the Accra Metropolis and examined their spatiotemporal patterns in relation to...
Industrialised countries have varied in their early response to the Covid-19 pandemic, and how they have adapted to new situations and knowledge since the pandemic began. These variations in preparedness and policy may lead to different death tolls from Covid-19 as well as from other diseases. We applied an ensemble of 16 Bayesian probabilistic mod...
Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is rapidly urbanizing, and ambient air pollution has emerged as a major environmental health concern in growing cities. Yet, effective air quality management is hindered by limited data. We deployed robust, low-cost and low-power devices in a large-scale measurement campaign and characterized within-city variations in fine...
Background
In China, mean body-mass index (BMI) and obesity in adults have increased steadily since the early 1980s. However, to our knowledge, there has been no reliable assessment of recent trends, nationally, regionally, or in certain population subgroups. To address this evidence gap, we present detailed analyses of relevant data from six conse...
Risk factors for increased risk of death from COVID-19 have been identified, but less is known on characteristics that make communities resilient or vulnerable to the mortality impacts of the pandemic. We applied a two-stage Bayesian spatial model to quantify inequalities in excess mortality in people aged 40 years and older at the community level...
High blood pressure is one of the most important risk factors for ischaemic heart disease, stroke, other cardiovascular diseases, chronic kidney disease and dementia. Mean blood pressure and the prevalence of raised blood pressure have declined substantially in high-income regions since at least the 1970s. By contrast, blood pressure has risen in E...
Urban noise pollution is an emerging public health concern in growing cities in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), but the sound environment in SSA cities is understudied. We leveraged a large-scale measurement campaign to characterize the spatial and temporal patterns of measured sound levels and sound sources in Accra, Ghana. We measured sound levels and...
Data collected at large scale and low cost (e.g. satellite and street level imagery) have the potential to substantially improve resolution, spatial coverage, and temporal frequency of measurement of urban inequalities. Multiple types of data from different sources are often available for a given geographic area. Yet, most studies utilize a single...
Experiencing outdoor space, especially natural space, during childhood and adolescence has beneficial physical and mental health effects, including improved cognitive and motor skills and a lower risk of obesity. Since school-age children typically spend 35–40 hours per week at schools, we quantified their access to open (non-built-up) space and gr...
From 1985 to 2016, the prevalence of underweight decr