Healthier Place Research Articles

A comparison Study on User Acceptance of Digital Healthcare Services Among M40 and B40 Community in Selangor: A Study on SELangkah Application

Over time, the global digital healthcare industry has started to take shape with the aim of offering benefits to all residents. Much effort has been put into improving the effectiveness and accessibility of the healthcare system in Malaysia for the benefit of its people. The Selangor state government is working to make all communities safer and healthier places, and one of its initiatives is the SELangkah application. Nonetheless, there are still concern over the take up of digital healthcare services among citizens especially those in the low-income and middle-income communities; B40 and M40. Previous study has shown that different economic status has an impact towards the acceptance level in technology services. Therefore, this study utilises qualitative research method to investigate the state of user acceptance in digital healthcare services among B40 and M40 users in Selangor through the case study of SELangkah application. Focus group discussion was conducted with over 10 participants from Selangor to evaluate and compare the acceptance level of digital healthcare services between both income group with the instrument development were guided by the Extended Technology Acceptance Model (ETAM). The area of group discussion covers users’ perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, attitude, behaviour, external challenges, and actual use. The findings show that both M40 and B40 group find the application to be beneficial; in addition, they believe there should be more awareness campaign to promote the application to the public. A few clear differences between the acceptance level of the two groups would be the simplicity of the language used in the application, the recommended features, and future needs between the two groups. M40 group find no difficulties to navigate the application but B40 group mention that the used words can be simplify. While M40 group recommended for gamification and high engagement features; the B40 group is looking more at practicality such as more information or linkages to nearby clinic. Nevertheless, both groups did not find major difficulties and they see a lot of benefit of the application. This will form the fundamental basis for future research efforts aimed at closing the technology acceptance gap and enabling a wider population to use technology as a tool to have a healthier life.

Towards healthier places: understanding local authority implementation of health impact assessments in urban planning projects in England

ABSTRACT Health Impact Assessment is a tool increasingly used by local authorities in the urban planning process to support the delivery of healthy places. However, there is a lack of evidence on the use of health impact assessments, including how they fit into planning decision-making processes. This paper reports on a qualitative study with nine participants in public and private sectors involved in the health impact assessment process in England. Using the language of policy theory, a model of how health impact assessments work to promote health in urban planning projects is proposed: in part by forcing change from developers through regulation, but more so by persuading them to make healthier developments voluntarily through a process of collaboration and dialogue. This model can help stakeholders involved in health impact assessments understand and manage the process more effectively. Findings also highlight enablers and barriers of effective practice which form the basis of recommendations for local authorities implementing Health Impact Assessment.

S07 Public green spaces as sustainable environments for inclusive HEPA

Abstract As urban populations around the world continue to grow, the push to transform our cities into greener, more sustainable, and healthier places is gaining momentum. In this context, it is widely recognized that different characteristics of public green spaces influence who accesses them, and how active people are in them. The challenges of equality, volume, and quality of HEPA should thus be addressed by a comprehensive approach that is taking into consideration the characteristics of green space. The symposium will contribute to an increased understanding of the role of physical environment and characteristics of green spaces to support inclusiveness and sustainability of HEPA. It foresees four presentations addressing the development of the urban environment. Two of which are research-oriented and present which spatial features of green spaces are particularly relevant for promoting PA in the vulnerable groups of older adults and teenagers. Two of which are practice-oriented and address two complementary sides of ensuring environmental quality and sustainability in relation to HEPA as a determinant of quality of life, health, and well-being.

Howard M. Shapiro: Remembering Cytometry's Muse.

There's no people like flow people; They smile where the lights are low. Even when there's Mycoplasma in your cells, Your laser smokes and emits bad smells, Still, you wouldn't trade it for a stack of gels- Well, I wouldn't, I know. Let's go on with the flow! (circa 1990 to the tune of “There's No Business like Show Business”) Howard Shapiro's love for cytometry and “flow people” was never more evident than in his music! So many of us can date our life in cytometry by the events where Howard was front and center not only entertaining us, but always teaching us something. Practical Flow Cytometry, for many of us, was the bible where we learned not only the how, but the what, and why of this science of analytical cytology that we know as flow cytometry. Howard was the consummate teacher and colleague. He always had time for any question big or small; he was never too busy to contribute to ISAC as well as many, many other venues where we all gathered to exchange knowledge, theories, and dream along with him of the future of cytometry. The world of cytometry would not be what it is today without Howard Shapiro and we will miss him dearly. We will miss his expansive expertise in all that it takes to make cytometers and cytometry work; we will miss his musings on what this field is and can be and how we can contribute to making the world a safer and healthier place; but most of all we will miss Howard. We have lost our gifted teacher, accomplished scientist, and dear friend. Not a one of us will ever be able to hear such classics as “List Mode,” “Carcinoma,” “The Great Attender” without smiling! Howard Shapiro made cytometry and our world a truly better place! I am glad that I, as so many of us, could call you teacher, but most of all friend. Photo courtesy of ISAC members Alvarao Luiz Bertho and Raquel Nogueira. The peer review history for this article is available at https://publons.com/publon/10.1002/cyto.a.24515.

Multilevel Faith-Based Public Health Initiative in Rural Alabama, 2017.

Recent shifts in public health approaches to reduce and prevent chronic disease encourage interventions to include multiple levels of the social ecological model. The objective of this 1-group pretest–posttest study was to determine differences in faith community policies and environments; interpersonal support; and individual behavior before and after Live Well Faith Communities, a 9-week, faith-based health promotion initiative. The study included a convenience sample of faith communities and participants. Validated instruments assessed faith communities’ policies and environments and participants’ interpersonal and individual practices and behaviors. Seventy-two small-group sessions with 737 adults were implemented in 14 faith communities. Faith communities adopted policies requiring healthy options for meals and snacks and implemented environmental changes to promote healthy eating and physical activity. Participants reported significant improvements in healthy eating encouragement, shopping practices, and vegetable consumption. Multilevel interventions prompt community organizations to become healthier places and individuals to adopt healthy lifestyles.

Design for All: Strategy to support Designers and Policy makers to achieve inclusive and healthier places

Design for All: Strategy to support Designers and Policy makers to achieve inclusive and healthier places

Design for All: Strategy to support Designers and Policy makers to achieve inclusive and healthier places

Design for All: Strategy to support Designers and Policy makers to achieve inclusive and healthier places

Place Standard: a practical tool to support the creation of healthier places

Place Standard: a practical tool to support the creation of healthier places

Organisations beyond Brundtland: A Definition of Corporate Sustainability Based on Corporate Values

Although a plethora of alternatives exist, companies often base their sustainability efforts more or less explicitly on the definition of the Brundtland Commission. There are, however, conceptual problems when this definition is removed from its original context, in which it addresses social policies and state institutions. In particular the notions of “needs of the present” and “future generations” reveal the qualitative differences between the socio-political context of the Brundtland Commission and the corporate context. In this paper, we explore the entailing dilemmas, argue why current approaches to solve them are insufficient and analyse common practices for sustainability-related statements of 50 companies in Switzerland. The results support the argument that companies tend to avoid a specific definition of corporate sustainability or transpose the Brundtland definition, instead. Both approaches are inappropriate as guiding principles for corporate policy. Instead, we propose basing the concept of sustainability on the broad premise that “the future is a better, healthier place than the present”, specified and substantiated using functionally formulated corporate values. These corporate values and the vision of a “better place” derived from them gear corporate sustainability efforts towards restitution and/or compensation.

The Good, the Bad, and the #BestOfIslaVista: Community Data Gathering and Research by Our Youth Leadership Group


 
 
 
 In this article, we present our teen leadership group and projects. We describe our “I’m a Student, Too!” campaign and why it is important to raise awareness about Latino/a children and families that live in Isla Vista, California, which has the reputation of being a college town. We outline our group’s mandate to create a better, safer, and healthier place where youth and families can grow up. We then describe how we collected data on people’s opinions of Isla Vista over the past two years and how we shared this information at town halls, University of California Santa Barbara orientations, and community conferences to make positive changes in our community.
 
 
 

How can we assess the effects of urban environment on obesity using aggregated data?

ObjectiveThis study aimed to assess the effects of urban physical environment on individual obesity using geographically aggregated health behavior surveillance data applying a geo-imputation method.Introduction'Where we live' affects 'How we live'. Information about 'how one lives' collected from the public health surveillance data such as the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS). Neighborhood environment surrounding individuals affects their health behavior or health status are influenced as well as their own traits. Meanwhile, geographical information of subjects recruited in the health behavior surveillance data is usually aggregated at administrative levels such as a county. Even if we do not know accurate addresses of individuals, we can allocate them to the random locations where is analogous to their real home within a locality using a geo-imputation method. In this study, we assess the association between obesity and built environment by applying random property allocation (1).MethodsData from the Korean Community Health Survey (KCHS), which is the nationwide community-based cross-sectional survey conducted by 253 community health centers in South Korea, were used (2). More than 90000 subjects recruited in the capital city Seoul from 2011 to 2014. They were selected by two-step stratified random sampling (424 administrative communities with an average area of 1.16km2 and two house types) in each 25 counties. We re-allocated them randomly on the nested locality based on their community (administrative boundaries) and hose type (land-use) using GIS program (Figure 1). Surrounding built environment elements such as fast-food markets, driving roads, public transit and road-crosse were measured within 500m buffer from randomly allocated locations as density or distance. Variables associating obesity are measured by : 1) self-reported obesity (self-reported body mass index(BMI) ≥ 25) (Figure 2), 2) perceived obesity, 3) intention to weight control. We implemented logistic regression models to estimate the effect of physical environmental factors on obesity.ResultsThe person who lives in a detached house, nearer fast food markets or with higher driving road density was more likely to be obese. Who lives in a detached house was less perceived their obesity. Who lives in a detached house, nearer fast food markets or with higher driving road density was less likely to intend to control their body weights. Association between intention to weight control and accessibility to subway station showed marginal effect.ConclusionsUrban environments influenced individual's obesity, perception, and intention to weight loss. Since we used cross-sectional survey data, we do not account cumulative environmental influence. Moreover, individuals' self-selection of more healthier places were not accounted. Even though we did not measure the environment at individuals' real address, we can measure the effects of neighborhood environment more efficiently by using random property allocation.

Vancouver’s False Creek Flats – Unlocking the Potential of Industrial Employment Lands ( breakout presentation )

Background Today, the False Creek Flats supports 8,000 jobs across 450 acres of industrial employment lands. Despite being only 1 km from downtown Vancouver and adjacent to the city’s busiest walking and cycling routes, only 16% of people walk or bike to work in the Flats, compared to 34% city-wide. Recognizing the importance of retaining industrial land uses in the inner-city, a 30-year plan was developed to intensify the area by prioritizing people as much as goods movement. A Walk-Centric Vision: To overcome the walking and cycling challenges in the area, the plan proposes a comprehensive network of improvements. These include connecting infrastructure gaps, increasing transit access, upgrading routes for all ages and abilities, pedestrian permeability through new developments, and grade-separated structures across rail. Overlaid on this network is a 4.5 km amenity loop to tie together sub-areas that are currently fragmented by rail yards and large industrial lots. ‘Walk the Line’ mimics the old shoreline of False Creek and will connect precincts and new pockets of public space every 5 minutes along the route. It will connect the existing Seawall to a new hospital and healthcare campus, existing and renewed parks, arts/cultural precincts, high-tech business and research, and celebrate a diverse history of industry and First Nations. With walking at the centre, ‘Walk the Line’ ties all aspects of the plan together to transform the Flats into a sustainable and thriving employment district. A Foundation for Investment: The plan’s Public Benefit Strategy lays the foundation for investing millions in walking and cycling infrastructure. The City will leverage new developments and major institutions, opportunities from rail grade-separation, city-wide DCLs and CACs, and operating budgets. Walking improvements are already underway and the benefit is clear. The area will grow to 30,000 jobs, greatly increase efficiency and safety of goods movement, and support growth of the Port. Be Aspirational: Without a long-term vision that dreams big and builds momentum for investment, the Flats would remain underutilized. Learn from a plan that will unlock the economic potential of the Flats, and transform the area into a greener and healthier place to work.

The Social Determinants of Health

The Social Determinants of Health

The Role of Social Media Platforms and the Internet in Community Nutrition Education: Making the 21st Century a Healthier Place

The Role of Social Media Platforms and the Internet in Community Nutrition Education: Making the 21st Century a Healthier Place

Variations in involvement: motivating bystanders to care for senior citizens

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to determine the impact of a senior service advertising campaign designed to increase volunteerism and financial donations among bystanders.Design/methodology/approachA cross-sectional mail survey was administered to 2,500 adults; 384 usable responses were obtained. Survey responses were analyzed by level of exposure and involvement in senior care.FindingsHigh-involvement individuals viewed the ads more favorably and exhibited stronger senior caretaking intentions. Low-involvement consumers were less likely to see their own potential contributions to senior care services as effective.Research limitations/implicationsCharacterizing involvement in terms of awareness, awareness involvement, perceived severity and perceived susceptibility, provides a starting point for future examinations of the relationship between involvement, perceived efficacy and various forms of promotion.Practical implicationsFrom a practitioner’s standpoint, this study identifies specific features of campaign design and audience profiling that might increase the effectiveness of bystander interventions. This study offers not only constructs that can be used for identifying particular audience subsets but also illustrates the practical ways in which perceived susceptibility and perceived response efficacy to a given issue can be addressed through a mass media campaign.Social implicationsSnowballing healthcare costs coupled with an avalanche of baby boomers entering the elderly phase of the life cycle make the need for bystander involvement in the lives of seniors increasingly important.Originality/valueWith limited theoretical and practical guidance on how to motivate bystanders to engage in prosocial behaviors, health communicators and marketers are challenged to address a vast range of public health issues that require citizen engagement. The research reviewed and presented here indicates the hope for engaging the public to become active players in making the nation a safer and healthier place.

A diabetes mellitus tipo 2 na área metropolitana do Porto: o risco de uma realidade amarga provocada também pelo (des)ordenamento território

A diabetes tipo 2 (DM) é uma doença metabólica com uma componente genética mas muito determinada pelo estilo de vida que já evidencia na Área Metropolitana do Porto custos individuais, sociais e económicos muito elevados e bastante graves. Todavia, para por cobro a este flagelo e medicar uma mudança de estilo de vida elaboramos em Sistema de Informação Geográfica (SIG), um projeto que nos permitisse combinar as características das 266 freguesias e construir o Índice de Privação para o Risco de Aparecimento de DM, uma ferramenta essencial a considerar no ordenamento de territórios mais saudáveis.

Presidential Address: Tropical Medicine in War and Peace

Each of us—each of you—sitting here tonight is working hard every day to make the world a better—and a healthier—place. Whether you dispense pretravel advice and vaccines or splice trypanosome genes, whether you are responding to the Ebola epidemic or designing a malaria-refractory mosquito, the spirit that animates your work is one of beneficence, generosity, and peace.

Improving public health by respecting autonomy: Using social science research to enfranchise vulnerable prison populations

It is widely recognised that prisoners constitute a vulnerable population that is subject to numerous health inequalities and merits special protection. Improving prisoners' access to healthcare by ensuring adherence to the principle of equivalence has been the main focus of efforts to ensure that their health is not jeopardised. However, another means of respecting prisoners' autonomy and improving their health is to involve them (and prison staff) in social science research within prisons. Such research not only produces valuable data which can be used to assess whether the principle of equivalence is being respected; it also enfranchises prisoners by allowing them to air concerns about perceived ill-treatment and influence their environment. If prison authorities enable such research and adjust policy accordingly, both they and prisoners will benefit from the increased level of respect for prisoners' autonomy, and the improvements in individual and public health that flow from this. Conducting social science research in prisons enables the creation of a virtuous cycle of respect that makes prisons safer and healthier places.

Impact of travel mode shift and trip distance on active and non-active transportation in the São Paulo Metropolitan Area in Brazil

BackgroundChanges in urban mobility play a major role in transforming metropolitan areas into healthier places. This study quantified the impact of changes in travel mode shift and trip distance on active and non-active transportation of working age adult population of São Paulo. Methods and findingsThrough different scenarios, we estimated the daily time spent in transportation per inhabitant (divided in active and non-active transportation time) and the proportion of inhabitants accumulating 30min or more of daily active transportation. The replacement of individual for collective motorized modes in long distance trips (>1000m) in combination with the substitution of long for short trips positively impacted all outcomes. Compared to the current situation, there was an increase in the active transportation time (from 19.4 to 26.7min/inhabitant), which also increased the proportion of adults active for transportation (from 27.6% to 35.4%). Additionally, the non-active transportation time decreased (from 67.0 to 26.2min/inhabitant), which helped to reduce the total time spent in transportation (from 86.4 to 52.9min/inhabitant). ConclusionTransport and urban planning policies to reduce individual motorized trips and the number of long trips might produce important health benefits, both by increasing population levels of active transportation and reducing the non-active and the total time of daily trips.

Academic-Practice Partnerships for Active Living: The Healthy Hawaii Initiative

Translating research into practice remains a challenge for public health and active living. Several issues have been identified as barriers to effective translation, including increasing the understanding of practice-based evidence, reframing dissemination challenges, placing greater emphasis on public health workforce development, and making research more accessible to policy audiences. Despite continued calls for better collaborations between researchers and practitioners, embedded structural issues exist that decrease collaborative opportunities. These include publication bias favoring studies with high internal validity, often at the expense of external validity; funding opportunities that focus exclusively on either research or practice; training of researchers by other researchers and not by practitioners; difficulties in creating and deepening relationships required to collaborate due to differences in structures and operating principles; and a lack of formal public health training among public health practitioners. Although these issues are common among many areas of public health, the problems are exacerbated by the multidisciplinary nature of the field of active living. There is a divide not only between researchers and practitioners but also across disciplines including transportation, education, parks and recreation, urban planning, and architecture. Although these structural issues make effective practice-based research difficult, they do not make it impossible. This commentary explores the case example of the Healthy Hawaii Initiative (HHI), where overcoming these barriers has been attempted and achieved to some extent. In 1999, the Hawaii state legislature passed legislation mandating that the Department of Health (HDOH) allocate 25% of the state’s tobacco settlement money for disease prevention programs targeting physical activity and nutrition. The state used these funds to create the HHI. Since the inception of the initiative, the HDOH has realized the need to have a strong evaluation of all components of the HHI and partnered with the University of Hawaii’s Department of Public Health Sciences to create the Healthy Hawaii Initiative Evaluation Team (HHIET). The HHIET is comprised of university-based faculty, research staff, and graduate students, who make up the research and evaluation arm of the initiative. The overall goal of the HHI is to increase years of healthy life for all people of Hawaii and reduce existing health disparities among ethnic groups in Hawaii. This goal is addressed by creating sustainable changes that promote healthy lifestyles, in particular through nutrition and physical activity, and by reducing health disparities throughout the state. Interventions are targeted at the individual, social, and environmental levels and use a variety of channels including public education, education of health professionals, school-based programs, and community initiatives. I have had the good fortune of leading the HHIET since the start of the initiative in 2000. The University and HDOH teams have discovered shared goals including making Hawaii a healthier place to live, work, learn, and play. We have also learned how to work together and to acknowledge our sometimes-competing priorities to create a strong partnership. For the university, competing priorities include conducting research studies for peer-reviewed publications. For the HDOH, they often mean answering to the priorities of a variety of stakeholders including elected officials, the Director of Health, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. These different perspectives have helped us to examine what practice-based research is. It needs to be highly relevant to proposed interventions, have strong external validity, and not take years to get results. These were and still are challenging issues that are not typically part of graduate school training. Next, I describe a series of practicebased research studies we have conducted and how they were vastly different from typical randomized trial biomedical research. Our first study examined changing the bell schedule of a local elementary school to offer recess before lunch for some grades. Intuitively, this makes sense. Students can run around without a stomach full of food, and lunch wait time is decreased, because the students can go to lunch when they are ready and not all at the same time. Because of the need to complete the study quickly with limited resources, we were only able to test the program in one school using a pretestposttest design. The intervention worked well in increasing access to recess equipment, decreasing plate waste, and, Jay E. Maddock, PhD, is with the Department of Public Health Sciences, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Manoa, Hawaii.