Commentary: Beyond urban-rural comparisons: towards a life course approach to understanding health effects of urbanization

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Abstract
Rapid urbanization is believed to be the driver behind the emerging epidemics of cardiovascular disease and diabetes in low-income countries.1, 2 So far, the role of urbanization has been evaluated mainly through comparisons of disease prevalence in urban and rural dwellers.2 –4 Although a useful starting point in documenting the scale of the problem, such crude geographical comparisons offer little insight into the determinants and pathways by which urban environment influences disease risk in a population, important for planning prevention programmes. Research by Sobngwi et al. tries to moves this agenda forward by assessing the exposure to urban environment over the life course (rather than current exposure) and relating it to obesity, diabetes, and hypertension in an adult population of Sub-Saharan Africa.5
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