In the prevention of cardiovascular disease, a WHO target is that at least 50% of eligible people use statins. Robust evidence is needed to monitor progress towards this target in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs), where most cardiovascular disease deaths occur. The objectives of this study were to benchmark statin use in LMICs and to investigate country-level and individual-level characteristics associated with statin use.

Nonpharmaceutical interventions such as stay-at-home orders continue to be the main policy response to the COVID-19 pandemic in countries with limited or slow vaccine rollout. Often, nonpharmaceutical interventions are managed or implemented at the subnational level, yet little information exists on within-country variation in nonpharmaceutical intervention policies. We focused on Latin America, a COVID-19 epicenter, and collected and analyzed daily subnational data on public health measures in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, and Peru to compare within- and across-country nonpharmaceutical interventions. We showed high heterogeneity in the adoption of these interventions at the subnational level in Brazil and Mexico; consistent national guidelines with subnational heterogeneity in Argentina and Colombia; and homogeneous policies guided by centralized national policies in Bolivia, Chile, and Peru. Our results point to the role of subnational policies and governments in responding to health crises. We found that subnational responses cannot replace coordinated national policy. Our findings imply that governments should focus on evidence-based national policies while coordinating with subnational governments to tailor local responses to changing local conditions.

The complex determinants of health and disease can be determined when approached as a system of interactions of biological agents at different scales. Similar to the physicochemical properties that govern nucleic acids and proteins, there should be a finite set of rules that dictate the behavior of cells to form tissues. Thus, the occurrence of disease can be seen as flaws in processes that are governed by rules pertaining to multicellular structures. Multiplexed imaging is a technology that connects information that bridges multiple biological scales (i.e., molecules, cells, and tissues) and enables elucidation of rules associated with the formation of multicellular structures. Uncovering important multicellular structures associated with disease will propel a wave of development of new categories of diagnostics and therapeutics.