The last half of this century has seen a demographic revolution in low-income countries. Urbanization brought on by migration and natural increase has become a dominant factor in all regions. Unlike urbanization in the higher-income countries of the world, which is associated with major advances in science, technology, and social organization as well as absorption of large populations, urbanization in low-income countries has not been accompanied by the same level of "economic and cultural progress.. . [and] has become a source of major concern" [1]. The accelerated growth of urban populations in low-income countries has tremendous social, economic, nutritional, health, and environmental consequences, as increasing numbers of urban poor live in crowded slums and squatter settlements with limited access to the basic resources necessary for a healthy and productive existence. The goals of this article are to describe the demographic, economic, and environmental dimensions of urban growth in low-income countries and to develop an understanding of the implications of rapid urban growth for the design of food and nutritional policies and programmes. To accomplish this, we examine the question, Are there unique urban policy and programme needs? This question has three components: (1) Are there unique nutritional needs? (2) Are unique factors associated with these nutritional needs and with the use and success of programmes and policies designed to address them? (3) Are there unique policy and programme issues and options to consider? Most significant of reasons for this focus is the lack of attention paid to urban nutrition needs. Most of the research on nutrition in low-income countries as well as most of our programme design, implementation, and evaluation are based on rural populations and needs [2]. For instance, of the 1,324 English-language citations in publications from INCAP (the Institute of Nutrition of Central America and Panama) from 1949 to 1985, only 2.6% relate to urban communities and only 0.2% focus exclusively on city-based populations [3]. Demographic, economic, and environmental dimensions of urbanization Eight issues indicated the enormity of needs of the urban sector: the proportion of people living in cities, rapid population-growth rates, absolute increases of population, concentrated population growth, a shift in the proportion of poor residing in cities, the proportion living in slum and squatter areas, environmental conditions, and basic health conditions.

This study assessed women and men on a divided attention task, body sway, and subjective (self-report) estimates of impairment across different doses of alcohol. Twelve females and 12 males (mean age of 20.4 years) were given placebo, low, and high doses of alcohol in random order across sessions. Each subject was tested 3 times during each session. The study controlled for recent drinking history by restricting participation to light drinkers who were matched on age and education. Alcohol doses were adjusted for body fat and equivalent blood alcohol concentrations (BACs) were attained in the two gender groups. The results indicated that women and men did not differ in their extent of cognitive impairment at placebo and low alcohol doses. However, women showed significantly more cognitive impairment than their male counterparts at the high alcohol doses, even with equivalent BACs. The sway measure was influenced only by BAC and not by the gender of the subject. Sway observations were less sensitive and more variable than estimates of cognitive impairment. The subjective impairment data indicated that female subjects were less sensitive than males to the effects of alcohol at both the low and high doses. Implications for future research on cognitive impairment are discussed.

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