Emerging technologies to measure neighborhood conditions in public health: implications for interventions and next steps.

M Schootman,M Lian,E J Nelson,E Shacham,A Mcvay,K Ratnapradipa,M Elliott,K Werner

doi:10.1186/s12942-016-0050-z

M Schootman, M Lian + Show 6 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1186/s12942-016-0050-z

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Abstract

Adverse neighborhood conditions play an important role beyond individual characteristics. There is increasing interest in identifying specific characteristics of the social and built environments adversely affecting health outcomes. Most research has assessed aspects of such exposures via self-reported instruments or census data. Potential threats in the local environment may be subject to short-term changes that can only be measured with more nimble technology. The advent of new technologies may offer new opportunities to obtain geospatial data about neighborhoods that may circumvent the limitations of traditional data sources. This overview describes the utility, validity and reliability of selected emerging technologies to measure neighborhood conditions for public health applications. It also describes next steps for future research and opportunities for interventions. The paper presents an overview of the literature on measurement of the built and social environment in public health (Google Street View, webcams, crowdsourcing, remote sensing, social media, unmanned aerial vehicles, and lifespace) and location-based interventions. Emerging technologies such as Google Street View, social media, drones, webcams, and crowdsourcing may serve as effective and inexpensive tools to measure the ever-changing environment. Georeferenced social media responses may help identify where to target intervention activities, but also to passively evaluate their effectiveness. Future studies should measure exposure across key time points during the life-course as part of the exposome paradigm and integrate various types of data sources to measure environmental contexts. By harnessing these technologies, public health research can not only monitor populations and the environment, but intervene using novel strategies to improve the public health.

Highlights

Adverse neighborhood conditions affect various health outcomes and play an important role beyond characteristics at the individual level [1]
Schootman et al Int J Health Geogr (2016) 15:20 and physical environments that promote good health for all” are two of the four Healthy People 2020 goals that provide the impetus to examine geographically based disparities related to adverse neighborhood conditions
In contrast to relatively stable forms of neighborhood conditions that are typically measured using these approaches, potential threats in the local environment such as crime and the response to crime may be subject to short-term change that can only be measured with more nimble technology

Summary

Introduction

Adverse neighborhood conditions affect various health outcomes and play an important role beyond characteristics at the individual level [1]. Advantages of Google Street View include efficiency, researcher safety, low cost, unobtrusive data collection and access to historical images of locations. Google Street View focuses on the built environment and does not provide data about specific environmental contaminations.

Results

Conclusion