Neighborhood In Houston Research Articles

Abstract B130: Partnership in persistent poverty neighborhoods: The Acres Homes Cancer Prevention Collaboration

Abstract Introduction: Rising obesity rates significantly contribute to increases in many types of cancer. The link between obesity, socioeconomic status, and cancer risk is evident, particularly in persistent poverty areas. The Acres Homes Cancer Prevention Collaboration (Acres Homes CPC), part of the Persistent Poverty Initiative (PPI) of the National Cancer Institute, is a dynamic partnership led by the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. This community-academic partnership, centered on the Acres Homes neighborhood in Houston, TX, that is impacted by persistent poverty, utilizes community-engaged strategies and transdisciplinary research to mitigate obesity-related cancer risks. Methods: Through multiple community partnerships, the CPC aims to alleviate persistent poverty effects, support early-career researchers, and test nutrition and physical activity interventions for reducing obesity-related cancer risk. Results: The Acres Homes CPC funds two research projects: a trial of a physical activity program for cancer survivors and a cluster-randomized trial of food distribution and nutrition education for elementary school children and their parents. We have funded seven pilot studies on topics such as food security, culinary medicine, physical activity and mild cognitive impairment, and the physical and safety environment of neighborhoods. Three community advisors guide and support all activities, and information on the initiative is provided monthly to a community steering committee. The Acres Homes CPC also supports pre- and postdoctoral fellows interested in research promoting cancer prevention and control in persistent poverty communities. Conclusions: This initiative aims to reduce cancer risk and improve cancer outcomes in persistent poverty communities by bridging the gap between research and practical implementation through community-based participatory research and partnership with the community to address obesity. Citation Format: Karen Basen-Engquist, Ruth Rechis, Michael Mackert, Brad Love, Shreela Sharma, Sanjay Shete, Qian Lu, Shine Chang, Margaret Raber, Miranda Baum, Crystal Roberson, Lorna McNeill. Partnership in persistent poverty neighborhoods: The Acres Homes Cancer Prevention Collaboration [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 17th AACR Conference on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved; 2024 Sep 21-24; Los Angeles, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2024;33(9 Suppl):Abstract nr B130.

Getting out and giving back: repertoires of destigmatization in the private social safety net

Abstract Receiving assistance can be stigmatizing. As the cash welfare rolls have fallen to near-historic lows, the privatization of the social safety net in many states has brought up new questions about how recipients of assistance meet their material needs without sacrificing their sense of dignity. I draw on 15 months of ethnographic observation and 44 interviews with social service recipients in two majority Black neighborhoods in Houston, Texas to explore how they destigmatize their encounters with social service providers. I find that service recipients primarily seek out organizations that will treat them with respect due to the stigma attached to receiving assistance. This stigma is both racialized and gendered, such that groups with identities congruent with negative stereotypes about welfare recipients—like Black women—see themselves at higher risk of stigmatization and therefore practice destigmatization strategies with greater frequency. I build on these findings by highlighting two repertoires of destigmatization that service recipients draw upon to access both material and symbolic resources simultaneously: getting out of their neighborhoods to receive services anonymously and giving back by volunteering at local organizations. In doing so, I highlight multiple pathways through which residents of disadvantaged neighborhoods move from stigmatization to destigmatization in the welfare system.

Co-Production for Equitable Governance in Community Climate Adaptation: Neighborhood Resilience in Houston, Texas

<p>As urban areas grapple with the pressing impacts of climate change, fostering community-level resilience becomes imperative. Co-production, emphasizing active stakeholder engagement, offers a pathway to robust, equitable, and inclusive adaptation strategies. This article delves into the co-production processes within neighborhood resilience planning in Houston, Texas, revealing how collaboration between communities, planners, and municipal leaders can address climate vulnerabilities and support disadvantaged groups. Through an empirical analysis of three Houston neighborhoods, the study evaluates co-production’s role in promoting neighborhood-scale adaptive capacity and reshaping power dynamics to advance equity and environmental justice. The results highlight the significance of local institutions and the necessity of municipal commitment to co-production efforts. The study contributes actionable insights on the application of co-production in neighborhood climate adaptation, emphasizing the need for direct municipal engagement to implement transformative spatial projects and rebalance governance frameworks for effective climate action.</p>

Enhancing the utilization of healthy living interventions among cancer survivors in historically underserved populations and communities.

This study aimed to describe the clinical characteristics and wellness programming preferences of cancer survivors from Acres Homes, a historically Black neighborhood in Houston, Texas, with areas of persistent poverty. The goal of this study was to identify opportunities to increase cancer survivor utilization of healthy eating and active living interventions aligned to cancer center community outreach and engagement efforts. This multiple methods study included a retrospective review of electronic health record data (n = 413) and qualitative interviews with cancer survivors (n = 31) immediately preceding initiation of healthy eating, active living programming in Acres Homes. This study found Acres Homes survivors have high rates of co-occurrent cardiometabolic disease including obesity (45.0%), diabetes (30.8%), and other related risk factors as well as treatment-related symptoms. Four major concepts emerged from interviews: (1) Factors that influence survivors' ability to eat well and exercise, (2) Current usage of community resources, (3) Interest in relevant programming, and (4) Specific programming preferences. Opportunities for current and future health promotion programming for cancer survivors were explored. Strategically tailoring community resources for cancer survivors can provide a more robust network of support to promote healthy eating and active living in this population. This work informed community implementation of evidence-based health interventions in Acres Homes and may support future projects aiming to enhance community-led cancer prevention efforts in historically underserved communities.

Quality of Stormwater Infrastructure Systems in Vulnerable Communities: Three Case Studies from Texas.

A properly functioning local stormwater drainage system is essential for mitigating flood risks. This study evaluates the quality of roadside drainage channels in three underserved communities in Texas: the Sunnyside neighborhood in Houston (Harris County), a neighborhood in the City of Rockport (Aransas County), and the Hoehn colonia (Hidalgo County). These communities have a history of flooding, are highly socially vulnerable, and rely on roadside ditches as their principal stormwater drainage system for runoff control. Mobile lidar (Light Detection and Ranging) measurements were collected for 6.09 miles of roadside channels in these communities. The raw lidar measurements were processed to evaluate drainage conditions based on the channel's geometric properties, hydraulic capacity, and level of service. The assessment results are linked to a Geographic Information System (GIS) tool for enhanced visualization. Finally, the paper provides insights regarding the quality of stormwater infrastructure in the study communities and discusses their practical implications.

Determinants of exposure to endocrine disruptors following hurricane Harvey

Hurricane Harvey was a category four storm that induced catastrophic flooding in the Houston metropolitan area. Following the hurricane there was increased concern regarding chemical exposures due to damage caused by flood waters and emergency excess emissions from industrial facilities. This study utilized personal passive samplers in the form of silicone wristbands in Houston, TX to both assess chemical exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) immediately after the hurricane and determine participant characteristics associated with higher concentrations of exposure. Participants from the Houston-3H cohort (n = 172) wore a wristband for seven days and completed a questionnaire to determine various flood-related and demographic variables. Bivariate and multivariate analysis indicated that living in an area with a high Area Deprivation Index (ADI) (indicative of low socioeconomic status), identifying as Black/African American or Latino, and living in the Houston neighborhoods of Baytown and East Houston were associated with increased exposure to EDCs. These results provide evidence of racial/ethnic and socioeconomic injustices in exposure to EDCs in the Houston Metropolitan Area. Since the multiple regression models conducted did not fully explain exposure (0.047 < R2 < 0.34), more research is needed on the direct sources of EDCs within this area to create effective exposure mitigation strategies.

A Participatory-Based Research Approach for Assessing Exposure to Lead-Contaminated Drinking Water in the Houston Neighborhood of the Greater Fifth Ward.

To address community-driven concerns about lead-contaminated drinking water in residential homes in the Greater Fifth Ward neighborhood in Northeast Houston, Texas utilizing participatory-based research. The study collected survey data and performed lead analysis on drinking water from residents’ homes. The Greater Fifth Ward is characterized as a majority-minority environmental justice community and is located within two confirmed cancer clusters. The residents of 172 homes completed a survey and had detectable lead levels in their water samples. Survey results indicated that more than half of the residents (58.2%) were concerned with the water quality and 42.9% rated the drinking water as poor. Water lead levels detected ranged from 0.01 to 22 µg/L. 10.9% of homes exceeding 1 µg/L, and one located exceeded the USEPA’s action limit of 15 µg/L. Homes built prior to 1978 without major renovation had significantly higher levels of lead in their drinking water compared to homes built after 1978 (p-value < 0.05). These findings demonstrate the need for lead testing of residential water in low socioeconomic-status communities, as well as demonstrating the benefits of community engagement and participatory research to address environmental health concerns.

A Framework for Evaluating the Effects of Green Infrastructure in Mitigating Pollutant Transferal and Flood Events in Sunnyside, Houston, TX

There is a growing and critical need to develop solutions for communities that are at particular risk of the impacts of the nexus of hazardous substances and natural disasters. In urban areas at high risk for flooding and lacking proper land-use controls, communities are vulnerable to environmental contamination from industrial land uses during flood events. This research uniquely applied a series of landscape pzerformance models to evaluate such associations including (1) the Green Values National Stormwater Calculator, (2) the Value of Green Infrastructure Tool, and (3) the Long-Term Hydrologic Impact Assessment Model. This paper presents a framework for combining landscape performance models, which are often only individually applied, to evaluate green infrastructure impacts on flood mitigation and pollutant transfer during flooding events using the Sunnyside neighborhood in Houston, Texas, USA, as a case site. The results showed that the plan reduced the risk of flooding, decreased stormwater runoff contaminants, and provided a possible direction to protect vulnerable communities.

Cancer risk associated with soil distribution of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons within three environmental justice neighborhoods in Houston, Texas.

Residents and advocacy groups began voicing concerns over the environmental quality located in the neighborhoods of Kashmere Gardens, Fifth Ward, and Denver Harbor in Houston, TX, following the confirmation of a cancer cluster in 2019 and another in 2021. These neighborhoods are in close proximity to a railyard and former wood treatment plant known to have utilized coal tar creosote and contain polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). This research took core soil samples in September and October 2020 from 46 sites to assess for the presence and concentration of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (USEPA) 7 Carcinogenic PAHs. Results showed the cumulative concentration of these PAHs in each sample was variable with a range of 13,767ng/g to 328ng/g and a mean of 2,517.2ng/g ± 3122. A regional soil screening evaluation revealed that 40 of the 46 soil samples were in excess of the USEPAs most conservative screening levels of 1.0 × 10-6 increased cancer risk, but none exceeding levels considered actionable for remediation. This study is a fundamental first step for quantifying the environmental pollutants in this minority-majority community. Findings revealed a low risk of cancer risk based on current PAH concentrations alone but cannot assess contributions from other contaminants or from past, possibly higher, levels of contamination. Further research is needed to identify the potential casual pathways of the observed cancer cluster and to explore possible remediation needs.

Integrated infrastructure-plan analysis for resilience enhancement of post-hazards access to critical facilities

This paper presents an integrated infrastructure-policy framework to analyze policy attention on addressing road infrastructure network vulnerability in terms of accessing critical facilities in the aftermath of a flood. Coping with network vulnerability, particularly physical access to various critical facilities and the services they provide, is an essential step in achieving a resilient community. However, the extent to which the network of local plans addresses such vulnerability remains unclear. To bridge this gap, this paper uses the Plan Integration for Resilience Scorecard method to examine the infrastructure-related policy attention in relation to community vulnerability vis-a-vis disrupted access to critical facilities. The proposed framework is tested in a set of super neighborhoods in Houston, Texas. Findings reveal a discrepancy between the policy effort and network vulnerability and identifies strengths and weaknesses of various plans in addressing disrupted access to critical facilities. The framework introduced in this paper provides a tool for stakeholders to evaluate an existing network of plans and identify gaps for future resilience improvement.

Coping with post-hurricane mental distress: The role of neighborhood green space

BackgroundAlthough increases in the prevalence of mental distress have been reported after natural disasters, less is known about the role the environment may play in mitigating posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in hurricane-impacted communities. AimThis study aims to investigate the extent to which concentration and perceived quality of neighborhood greenness are associated with lower levels of PTSD, along with potential mechanisms through which these effects occur. MethodsWe conducted a cross-sectional survey of individuals (N=272) from 30 Houston neighborhoods that were affected during Hurricane Harvey. Perceived quality of neighborhood green space was measured using a scale adapted from the Neighborhood Open Space (NOS) scale, and concentration of greenness was measured objectively using the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI). Probable PTSD was measured using the Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Checklist for DSM-5 (PCL-5), and hurricane-related distress using the Impact of Event Scale (IES-R). Generalized linear mixed models were used to fit individual models. Based on the results, structural equation models were employed to test direct and indirect pathways simultaneously. Models were adjusted for neighborhood- and individual-level confounders. ResultsGreater perceived quality of neighborhood green space was significantly associated with lower likelihoods of probable PTSD and hurricane-related distress. The effects of perceived green space quality on hurricane-related distress were mediated by higher levels of emotional resilience. Social cohesion, although significantly correlated with PTSD and distress, did not mediate the effect of perceived green space quality on either. Neighborhood NDVI was significantly associated with hurricane-related distress, but not with PTSD. ConclusionWe conclude that living in neighborhoods with greater perceived quality of green space was associated with lower levels of post-hurricane distress, with mediation especially through the emotional resilience pathway. These findings suggest that in disaster recovery policy frameworks, more attention should be paid to the benefits of high-quality neighborhood green infrastructure.

Spatial Distribution of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon Contaminants after Hurricane Harvey in a Houston Neighborhood.

Background.Hurricane Harvey made landfall along the Texas Gulf Coast as a Category 4 hurricane on August 25, 2017, producing unprecedented precipitation that devastated coastal areas. Catastrophic flooding in the City of Houston inundated industrial and residential properties resulting in the displacement and transfer of soil, sediment, and debris and heightening existing environmental justice (EJ) concerns.Objectives.The primary aim of this study was to evaluate the presence, distribution, and potential human health implications of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in a residential neighborhood of Houston, Texas following a major hurricane.Methods.Concentrations of PAHs in 40 soil samples collected from a residential neighborhood in Houston, Texas were measured. Spatial interpolation was applied to determine the distribution of PAHs. Potential human health risks were evaluated by calculating toxicity equivalency quotients (TEQs) and incremental excess lifetime cancer risk (IELCR).Results.Total priority PAH concentrations varied across samples (range: 9.7 × 101 ng/g-1.6 × 104 ng/g; mean: 3.0 × 103 ng/g ± 3.6 × 103 standard deviation). Spatial analysis indicated a variable distribution of PAH constituents and concentrations. The IELCR analysis indicated that nine of the 40 samples were above minimum standards.Conclusions.Findings from this study highlight the need for fine scale soil testing in residential areas as well as the importance of site-specific risk assessment.Competing Interests.The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Houston, We Have a Gentrification Problem

Local environmental improvement plans are increasingly popular among urban planners. As climate change and environmental justice concerns increase, many communities demand a change in local land use policies that put these concerns at the forefront. One such community is the city of Houston, Texas, which issued several environmental improvement plans in recent years after the devastation of Hurricane Harvey. As used in this Comment, an environmental improvement plan is a local government planning initiative that aims to implement positive environmental change in urban areas historically burdened by environmental hazards. Such neighborhoods are often undeveloped, low-socioeconomic communities blighted by an accumulation of hazardous pollutants. These communities lack open, green space, clean and affordable natural resources, and resiliency against natural disasters. However, when cities successfully implement environmental improvement plans, targeted neighborhoods often undergo gentrification, thereby displacing the poorer community members into another area blighted by the same environmental hazards the plan was intended to protect them from. This Comment seeks to explore the intended benefits of Houston’s various environmental improvement initiatives, to evaluate the current gentrification trends in Houston neighborhoods targeted for improvement, and to highlight the potential future concerns for vulnerable Houston neighborhoods as these new land-use policies go into effect. Environmental improvement plans are an important and necessary aspect of responsible and sustainable development, but, if implemented without regard to possible gentrification effects, they can have negative, unintended consequences on a city’s diversity and economic health. Fortunately, there are ways that city planners and community members can mitigate these negative effects and ensure positive change and inclusive growth.

A House but Not a Home: How Surveillance in Subsidized Housing Exacerbates Poverty and Reinforces Marginalization

AbstractA robust literature has shown that surveillance disproportionately targets poor people of color through the criminal justice and welfare systems. However, little empirical research traces the mechanisms through which surveillance reproduces inequality in other domains, such as subsidized housing, where private actors including property owners and landlords do the work of surveilling tenants. In this article, I apply the theoretical lens of surveillance to the case of subsidized housing to explore the symbolic and material consequences of being monitored at home. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 67 low-income Black mothers in the Sunnyside neighborhood in Houston, Texas, I argue that the scrutiny mothers face in and around their homes reproduces inequality through two key mechanisms. First, surveillance creates a home environment devoid of privacy, that mothers liken to being in prison. Mothers interpret this scrutiny as an effort to control and contain them because of their race, reinforcing racialized notions of presumptive Black criminality. Second, surveillance heightens the material risk for mothers of being caught breaking rules, which paves the way for eventual eviction and exacerbates poverty. Although mothers develop strategies to counter and at times resist disciplinary monitoring, these efforts come with drawbacks that can make surviving poverty harder. Taken together, these findings suggest that being surveilled at home not only diminishes low-income Black mothers’ status in society, but also pushes them into deeper economic precarity. This research extends our understanding of the reach of surveillance into the lives of the poor even in spaces considered to be private.

Characterization of vulnerability of road networks to fluvial flooding using SIS network diffusion model

This study aims to characterize the vulnerability of road networks to fluvial flooding using a network diffusion-based method. Various network diffusion models have been applied widely for modeling the spreading of contagious diseases or capturing opinion dynamics in social networks. By comparison, their application in the context of physical infrastructure networks has just started to gain some momentum, although physical infrastructure networks also exhibit diffusion-like phenomena under certain stressors. This study applies a susceptible-impacted-susceptible (SIS) diffusion model to capture the impact of flooding on the road network connectivity. To that end, this paper undertook the following four steps. First, the road network was modeled as primal graphs and nodes that were flood-prone (or the origins of the fluvial flood) were identified. Second, temporal changes in the flood depth within the road network during a flooding event were obtained using a data-driven geospatial model. Third, based on the relationship between vehicle speed and flood depth on road networks, at each time step, the nodes in the road network were divided into two discrete categories, namely functional and closed, standing for Susceptible and Impacted in the SIS diffusion model, respectively. Then, two parameters of the SIS model, average transition probabilities between states, were estimated using the results of the hydraulic simulation. Fourth, the robustness of the road network under various SIS diffusion scenarios was estimated, which was used to test the statistical significance of the difference between the robustness of the road network against diffusions started from the randomly chosen nodes and nodes with different high centrality measures. The methodology was demonstrated using the road network in the Memorial super neighborhood in Houston. The results show that diffusive disruptions that start from nodes with high centrality values do not necessarily cause a more significant loss to the connectivity of the road network. The proposed method has important implications for applying link predictions on road networks, and it casts significant insights into the mechanism by which cascading disruptions spread from flood control infrastructure to road networks, as well as the diffusion process in the road networks.

Baseline data for distribution of contaminants by natural disasters: results from a residential Houston neighborhood during Hurricane Harvey flooding

Hurricane Harvey made landfall in Texas August 25, 2017, bringing massive rains and flooding that impacted soils in a residential neighborhood in East Houston. Trace elements, organochlorine pesticides, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), polybrominated diphenyl ether fire retardants (PBDEs) and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) were determined in 24 soil samples. The highest concentrations found in soils were total PAHs, which ranged from 1,310 μg/kg to 85,700 μg/kg with a mean of 12,600 μg/kg. Analysis of specific PAH ratios indicate the source of the PAHs were dominated by pyrogenic rather than petrogenic sources. Chlordanes were detectable in the area where the likely local source is for ant control. The trace metal concentrations were below any environmental health concern concentrations but As, Cd, Hg, Pb, Se, Ag, Zn were enriched over the crustal abundance. While Hurricane Harvey was responsible for the redistribution of many contaminants, the large volume of rain and floodwater likely transported contaminants from the land areas and into the Houston Ship Channel and Galveston Bay. The findings from this study will serve as baseline data for determining the mobilization of contaminants caused by natural disasters.

Evaluating the Impact of Race and Gender on Environmental Risk Perceptions in the Houston Neighborhood of Manchester.

Previous research has shown that white males tend to perceive risks from environmental exposures as lower than women and members of minority populations, often referred to as the white male effect. However, this effect was mostly demonstrated without regard to the actual lived environment experienced by the study participants. There is growing evidence that differences in risk perceptions cannot be adequately explained through race or gender. This cross-sectional study collected survey data from residents of Manchester, a small neighborhood in Houston, Texas, characterized by industrial sites, unimproved infrastructure, nuisance flooding, and poor air quality. Trained community members attempted a complete census within the geographically compact neighborhood. Logistic regression was used to estimate the relative effect of race on environmental health perceptions adjusted for generational age. In contrast to previous research, our study (N = 109) showed that nonwhite individuals perceived a lower environmental health risk compared with their white counterparts. Comparing female and minority racial groups with white males showed that on most issues, white males had the highest perception of risk. For example, adjusted for age, nonwhite respondents perceived the risk of contact with standing water as significantly lower than white respondents (odds ratio = 0.34; 95% confidence interval = 0.12-0.93). This study supports the hypothesis that when environmental conditions experienced by individuals are the same, minority groups tend to underestimate their risk compared with white males. One possible explanation put forth is that communal norms are created within minority populations through generations of exposure to negative environmental conditions compared with white populations.

Domestic Exposures to Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons in a Houston, Texas, Environmental Justice Neighborhood.

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are a class of >100 chemicals that naturally occur in coal tar, crude oil, and gasoline and can be manufactured as part of dyes, plastics, and pesticides. PAHs are complex environmental toxicants and exposure to them have been linked to adverse health outcomes including cancer, as well as diseases of the skin, liver, and immune system. Residents of the environmental justice neighborhood of Manchester, located on Houston's East End, are disproportionally exposed to toxic pollutants from both industry and transportation infrastructure. Based on a longstanding community engagement partnership with the research team, neighborhood residents sought to better understand their domestic exposure to PAHs. Particulate wipes were used to collect dust from a marked area within the entryway of randomly selected homes to assess for the presence of PAHs. Nineteen of the 61 PAH analytes, including the Environmental Protection Administration's 16 priority PAHs and the subgroup of 7 probable human carcinogens, were found in the sampled homes. Residents of the Houston neighborhood of Manchester potentially have significant domestic exposure to PAHs from combustion sources. More research is needed to assess the source of the PAHs and to better understand the potential health impacts of these exposures.

Community-Based Outreach and Treatment for Underserved Older Adults With Clinically Significant Worry: A Randomized Controlled Trial

To determine whether Calmer Life (CL) improved worry, generalized anxiety disorder-related (GAD-related) symptoms, anxiety, depression, sleep, trauma-related symptoms, functional status, and quality of life better than Enhanced Community Care with Resource Counseling (ECC-RC) at 6 months and 9 months. A randomized, controlled, comparative-effectiveness study involving underserved, low-income, mostly minority neighborhoods in Houston, Texas, looked at individuals ≥50 with significant worry and interest in psychosocial treatment. Interventions were CL, cognitive behavioral therapy with resource counseling, facilitation of communication with primary care providers about worry/anxiety, integration of religion/spirituality, person-centered skill content and delivery and nontraditional community providers, ECC-RC, and enhanced standard community-based information/ resource counseling addressing basic unmet and mental health needs. Primary outcomes were worry and GAD-related symptom severity. Secondary outcomes were anxiety, depression, sleep difficulties, trauma-related symptoms, functional status, quality of life, service use and satisfaction. Similar, moderate improvements followed CL and ECC-RC on worry, GAD-related symptoms, anxiety, depression, sleep, trauma-related symptoms, and mental health quality of life at 6 and 9 months, but with symptoms at both times and higher satisfaction with CL at both. Fewer ECC-RC participants reported a hospital admission in the prior 3 months than those in CL at 6 and 9 months; at 9 months, fewer reported a visit with a provider in the previous 3 months. Both interventions showed similar improvements at 6 and 9 months, but symptoms remained that might require care. Either intervention or a combination may be useful for low-income older adults with identified worry/anxiety.

The development of a participatory assessment technique for infrastructure: Neighborhood-level monitoring towards sustainable infrastructure systems

Climate change and increasing natural disasters coupled with years of deferred maintenance have added pressure to infrastructure in urban areas. Thus, monitoring for failure of these systems is crucial to prevent future impacts to life and property. Participatory assessment technique for infrastructure provides a community-based approach to assess the capacity and physical condition of infrastructure. Furthermore, a participatory assessment technique for infrastructure can encourage grassroots activism that engages residents, researchers, and planners in the identification of sustainable development concerns and solutions. As climate change impacts disproportionately affect historically disenfranchised communities, assessment data can further inform planning, aiming to balance the distribution of public resources towards sustainability and justice. This paper explains the development of the participatory assessment technique for infrastructure that can provide empirical data about the condition of infrastructure at the neighborhood-level, using stormwater systems in a vulnerable neighborhood in Houston, Texas as a case study. This paper argues for the opportunity of participatory methods to address needs in infrastructure assessment and describes the ongoing project testing the best use of these methods.