Your neighborhood is not my neighborhood: a mapped comparison of the neighborhoods of public housing developments with other neighborhoods in Boston

Abstract

Components of a neighborhood provide insight into people's daily life and needs. Limited food access can subsequently adversely affect health status. Challenges to environmental accessibility to healthy foods and transportation are drivers of obesity. Therefore, the immediate environment of people who live in public housing developments may not be conducive for residents to purchase and eat healthy foods, and be physically active. Mapping Boston's public housing developments with ArcGIS (Geographic Information Systems) and defining key asset characteristics of the neighborhoods surrounding them is a powerful strategy to visually depict regions which are known as “food deserts” due to the limited accessibility to healthy foods. Food deserts proximal to public housing developments may then be major factors in the occurrence of obesity in urban at‐risk populations. We demonstrate the relevant differences between neighborhoods containing public housing developments and those which do not. We further use mapping to present an accessible picture of a complex urban public health issue: the interaction between type of neighborhood and differential access to healthy nutrition and activity options.CDCU48DP001922Grant Funding Source: CDCU48DP001922