Bouncing and the Black Box of Reentry’s Neighborhood Effects

Time to specify mechanisms of community health benefit or harm

Application of Multiple Geographical Units Convolutional Neural Network based on neighborhood effects in urban waterlogging risk assessment in the city of Guangzhou, China

Neighbourhood-level interventions offer a promising opportunity to promote child mental health at a population level; however, neighbourhood effects are still regarded as a ‘black box’ and a better understanding of the specific design elements, such as public open space, is needed to inform actionable policy interventions. Methods: This study leveraged data from a population linked dataset (Australian Early Development Census—Built Environment) combining information from a national census of children’s developmental outcomes with individualised geospatial data. Associations between access to (within 400 m and 800 m from home), and quality of, public open space and child mental health outcomes across eight capital cities were estimated using multilevel logistic regression models, adjusting for demographic and contextual factors. Access was defined based on proximity of public open space to children’s home addresses, within distance thresholds (400 m, 800 m) measured along the road network. Effect modification was tested across maternal education groups. Results: Across the eight capital cities, inequities in access to child friendly public open spaces were observed across maternal education groups and neighbourhood disadvantage quintiles. Children with access to any type of public open space within 800 m of home had lower odds of demonstrating difficulties and higher odds of competence. Children with access to child friendly public open spaces within 800 m of home had the highest likelihood of demonstrating competence. Conclusion: Improving access to neighbourhood public open space appears to be a promising strategy for preventing mental health difficulties and promoting competence in early childhood. Action is needed to redress socio-spatial inequities in access to child friendly public open space.

Examining mediators of housing mobility on adolescent asthma: Results from a housing voucher experiment

Two. Bouncing and the Black Box of Reentry’s Neighborhood Effects

Coarse root architecture: Neighbourhood and abiotic environmental effects on five tropical tree species growing in mixtures and monocultures

Over the last decade there has been a renewed interest in identifying exactly how aspects of the residential built environment “get under the skin” and affect the health of not only those who dwell within, but reside and commute among, disorderly and deteriorating buildings. In parallel, across the different disciplines that constitute the neighbourhood effects literature, there is a growing acknowledgement that unpacking the “black box” of the phenomenon will require a principled theoretical approach that proposes plausible causal pathways between the area-level neighbourhood context and individual-level health; that is a concerted effort to answer not only the “why?” (ultimate) question, but the “how?” (proximate) question, too. Building on Wilson and O’Brien’s explicitly evolutionary construct of Community Perception, we introduce Jos Brosschot’s Generalised Unsafety Theory of Stress to propose and test a novel account of the causal pathway we believe residential maintenance plays between a place and its people. We use C-reactive protein (CRP), a biomarker associated with infection and stress, alongside information relating to neighbourhood maintenance, demographic characteristics, and health behaviours, all drawn from the UK Household Longitudinal Study. Hierarchical multiple regression models estimate CRP for exposure to poor maintenance conditions, controlling for known predictors and confounders. Results indicate that poor maintenance is associated with elevated CRP. Residential maintenance matters to people’s physical health. Future work will look to further elucidate the proximate mechanisms that underlie this pathway, in the hope that it will lead to impactful evidence-based policy proposals.

The culture of poverty model implies that low-income individuals who acquired a low sense of efficacy will retain it, while the geography of opportunity model implies that that they will change if their opportunities improve. The Gautreaux Program moves low-income black families to the city or suburbs in a quasi-random procedure. Participants who moved to higher SES neighbourhoods had higher efficacy and felt safer, which mediated the neighbourhood effects on efficacy. This paper examines which experiences participants identify as having an influence on their sense of efficacy, and the ways those experiences have these effects.