Nashville-Davidson County Research Articles

Youth Participatory Action Research for Equitable Urban Design

The Nashville Youth Design Team (NYDT) is a youth participatory action research and design collective based in Metro Nashville-Davidson County, Tennessee, USA. Developing out of a longstanding collaborative partnership between the Civic Design Center, a Nashville-based nonprofit that supports community engagement in urban design and planning, and researchers from Vanderbilt University, the NYDT seeks to improve youth health and well-being through research, design, and advocacy. In this paper we briefly describe the origins and goals of the NYDT before applying the NYDT’s action research process to the team’s most recent project, the Dream City Workshop, to illustrate how the team’s work aims to center youth voices in decision-making spaces and challenge structural inequities within the built environment. The Dream City Workshop is a two hour design thinking workshop, where youth participants are encouraged to create a city specifically designed to meet the needs of young people; a city where the only limit is their imagination. The goal of this workshop is to help young people think creatively to resist hegemonic norms and challenge structural inequities like structural racism and classism to imagine a better and more inclusive city for all. Following a detailed description of the development and implementation of the Dream City Workshop, we consider the strengths and weaknesses of the NYDT’s action research process and the workshop, specifically exploring how the team, through their work, seeks to address structural racism and work towards health equity. We conclude the paper by providing recommendations for others interested in cultivating similar locally focused action research projects and collectives.

Participatory Mapping of Holistic Youth Well-Being: A Mixed Methods Study

Urban environments influence well-being among young people in many ways, yet youth perspectives are often excluded from decision-making processes including urban planning and design. From 2020 to 2021, the Nashville Youth Design Team, a participatory action research and design collective composed of high school students in Metro Nashville-Davidson County, Tennessee investigated the influence of built environments on diverse aspects of youth well-being. By employing a comprehensive eight-element definition of wellness (i.e., environmental, financial, intellectual, mental, physical, recreational, social, and spiritual), the team created and disseminated a Youth Wellness survey to middle and high school students across Nashville-Davidson County. In their survey, youth researchers asked their peers to rate their own wellness across each of these eight domains. The participants were also encouraged to identify locations in the city that either supported or detracted from their sense of well-being. This study utilized these data to conduct a spatial analysis, exploring how proximity to wellness-supporting or detracting locations influenced young people’s self-reported well-being. The data from open-ended survey questions were also analyzed qualitatively to provide context on how different environmental factors influence youth well-being. This research offers insights into the relationship between the built environment and youth wellness, highlighting the importance of incorporating youth perspectives into urban planning efforts.

West Nile Virus and Epizootic Hemorrhagic Disease Virus Co-Infection in a Novel Host at the Nashville Zoo.

On August 30, 2017, one of five bontebok in a mixed-species exhibit at the Nashville Zoo at Grassmere exhibited acute hind-limb ataxia and altered demeanor. Pathological examination demonstrated meningoencephalitis and spinal myelitis. Coinfection of West Nile virus (WNV) and epizootic hemorrhagic disease virus (EHDV) was revealed by quantitative real-time and traditional reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction assays and virus isolation/whole genome sequencing from brain tissue, respectively. Whole genome sequencing was conducted for EHDV. Mosquito testing from September 19 to October 13, 2017, demonstrated a higher WNV infection rate in mosquitoes at the zoo compared with the rest of Nashville-Davidson County. EHDV is endemic in wild white-tailed deer (family Cervidae) in Tennessee, and the prevalence in wildlife depends on environmental influences. This case illustrates the potential susceptibility of exotic zoo animals to endemic domestic arthropod-borne viruses (arboviruses) and reinforces the importance of cooperative antemortem and postmortem surveillance strategies among human, wildlife, and domestic animal health agencies.

Quantifying the Benefits of Home Buyouts for Mitigating Flood Damages

Abstract With increasing costs of floods across the globe, interest has grown in using managed retreat strategies, such as home buyouts, for flood mitigation. For years, national-level estimates of the benefits of flood mitigation investments in the United States have been estimated as being on the order of 4:1 (USD) or more recently 6:1 (USD), according to the Federal Emergency management Agency and others. Localized evaluation of the true costs and benefits for communities is limited, however, and primarily centered around avoiding direct structural damages. Home buyouts, where individuals’ properties are purchased and removed from risk while reducing impervious areas, are only one of many mitigation options captured in the national estimates. This paper presents a scenario analysis to estimate a localized return on investment of a home buyout program for Nashville-Davidson County, Tennessee in the United States that justifies investment in such programs. It considers the cost of buyouts across the community over several decades. It also compares those costs to benefits such as changes in stormwater attenuation, damages avoided, and exposed populations for a specific extreme flood event. Overall, at a localized scale, the study demonstrates that the return on investment is comparable to national averages, and that proactive implementation significantly increases the value of benefits relative to costs. The approach has potential applicability to other areas in the United States and beyond. It can be used to make the case for investment in such mitigation programs utilizing similarly available data.

Perceived Unfair Treatment by Police, Race, and Telomere Length: A Nashville Community-based Sample of Black and White Men.

Police maltreatment, whether experienced personally or indirectly through one's family or friends, represents a structurally rooted public health problem that disproportionately affects minorities. Researchers, however, know little about the physiological mechanisms connecting unfair treatment by police (UTBP) to poor health. Shortened telomeres due to exposure to this stressor represent one plausible mechanism. Using data from a community sample of black (n = 262) and white (n = 252) men residing in Nashville-Davidson County, we test four hypotheses: (1) Black men will be more likely to report UTBP than white men, (2) those reporting UTBP will have shorter telomeres than those not reporting UTBP, (3) this association will be more pronounced among black men, and (4) these hypotheses will extend to those who report vicarious UTBP. Results reveal support for all hypotheses. The implications for our findings are discussed as they pertain to debates on policing practices and health disparities research.

Weighed down by discriminatory policing: Perceived unfair treatment and black-white disparities in waist circumference

Police maltreatment, whether experienced personally or indirectly through one’s family or friends, represents a potentially harmful stressor, particularly for minority populations. We address this issue by investigating: (1) how waist circumference (WC) varies by personal and vicarious exposure to unfair treatment by police (UTBP); and (2) to what extent exposure to UTBP explains the black-white disparity in WC. We employed data collected from a community-based sample of black (n = 601) and white (n = 608) adults living in Nashville-Davidson county Tennessee to address these questions. Results from our final linear regression model showed that those who reported vicarious UTBP had WCs that were approximately 2 in. greater than those who did not (b = 2.03; p = 0.003). While personal UTBP was not linked to higher WC, a post-hoc analysis suggested that our ability to detect an association was complicated by selection. Binary mediation analysis revealed that differential exposure to vicarious UTBP accounted for approximately 12% of the black-white WC disparity among women. We found no black-white differences in WC among men. The association between vicarious UTBP and WC did not vary by age, race, or gender. Overall, our findings point toward the role of discriminatory policing as a potential upstream contributor to racial disparities in health.

The Public and Its Affective Problems

Abstract Dewey emphasizes the perception of “indirect consequences” of transactions as the basis of responsible public identity and organization. These consequences are external; they appear in the scientifically observable world and are susceptible to technical control. But transactions may have indirect affective consequences that are part of a culturally influenced inner reality, pose obstacles to speech and communication, and fund an irresponsible public identity-cum-organization. Rhetorical theory that builds on Dewey's “public” ignores these consequences at considerable cost. This claim is supported by a social psychoanalytic conception of affects and by an interpretive-analysis of public speech-acts that moved from opposition to the largely unauthorized immigration of Latin Americans to Nashville-Davidson County, Tennessee, to reactionary endorsement and legislative passage of an “English-first” ordinance.

How Critical Events Rather than Performance Trends Shape Public Evaluations of the Schools.

This paper argues that critical events rather than performance trends affect the collective evaluation of public education because critical events are more likely to stimulate competition among political activists over the meaning attached to real-world happenings. This means, for example, that students' test score averages are not the proximate cause of public evaluations of public schools, but referenda, political interventions, or school shootings may be decisive, simply because such events provoke contests over meaning into which many attentive citizens are drawn. Moreover, racial differences in the assessment of public schools are more likely to result from critical events than from performance trends because racial spokespersons are more vigilant and outspoken in periods of dramatic encounter than in the face of everyday frustrations or pleasures. Public opinion surveys of Nashville–Davidson County, Tennessee, demonstrate episodic diminutions of public esteem for public schools attached to critical events, but not to performance trends. The Nashville case shows that political interventions by social movements or political elites seem especially likely to cause serious declines in the rating given the schools by the general public.

Public Beliefs About the Causes of Homelessness

Public Beliefs About the Causes of Homelessness

Reported sexual assault in Nashville-Davidson County, Tennessee, 1980 to 1982

A review of the experience of 440 women reporting they had been raped was made from their initial contact with the police, through their medical-forensic examination at the county hospital emergency room, by any judicial proceedings, and by their longer term psychological counseling. The data were then compared with those from other municipalities. The assailant's use of a weapon seemed the strongest variable correlated with the victim's decision to press for prosecution. Being raped by a stranger or being physically injured did not correlate with this decision. Women most likely to have been victims of a previous rape were over 40 years old, were black, were assaulted by someone well known to them, or had some sort of mental health problem, and these variables were independent of each other. This implies these victims somehow suffer from an increased vulnerability to repeated rape. The data suggest that use of a county hospital emergency room for the medical management of rape victims discourages their reporting the event to the authorities and their seeking medical treatment.

The Location of Service and Office Activities in Nashville-Davidson County, 1970

centric city is based upon a descriptive picture of urban residential patterns put forth by E. W. Burgess some fifty years ago [Burgess 1925]. This model locates all service and office activities in the central business district (CBD), and then arranges other land use in concentric bands focused on the downtown core. One profitable extension of this model by Alonso and others has been to explain the abstract monocentric city in terms of access, amenity, and public policy factors set forth by Foley [Alonso 1964; Foley 1956]. This approach also locates the service and office firms in the downtown core because these activities are most dependent on accessibility to both input and output markets. Other descriptive studies of intraurban land use emphasize that service and office site selection is made on the basis of need for access and amenity resources available at a particular location [Loewenstein 1965; Murphy 1966; Rannells 1956]. Recent studies have been concerned with the characteristics and determinants of service and office location in New York [Armstrong and Pushkarev 1972], London [Rhodes and Kan 1971], and Chicago [Fales and Moses 1972]. The New York studies have tried to identify the intraurban distribution of services that occupy that city's office buildings and to investigate New York's status as the office capital of the nation. Interest in London's office activities also derives

GESTATIONAL EXPOSURE TO RUBELLA VACCINEES.A POPULATION SURVEILLANCE STUDY

FLEET, WILLIAM F.; VAUGHN, WILLIAM; LEFKOWITZ, LEWIS B. JR.; SCHAFFNER, WILLIAM; FEDERSPIEL, CHARLES F.; THOMPSON, JULIETTE; KARZON, DAVID T. Author Information

Gestational exposure to rubella vaccinees: a population surveillance study.

Over a two-year period an attempt was made to identify instances of transmission of rubella vaccine virus from rubella vaccinees to pregnant women in Nashville-Davidson County, Tennessee. Approximately 24,000 children were immunized in a mass campaign at the outset of the study. Several prospective surveillance methods of 11,635 women and their new babies were employed. Attempts were made to recover rubella virus from throat swabs of 10,951 newborns. No rubella vaccine virus was recovered. Wild rubella virus was isolated from a single infant with the congenital rubella syndrome whose mother had natural rubella during the first month of pregnancy. Rubella virus was not isolated from the products of 240 abortions. There were no seroconversions among 3990 women who had paired sera available for study. Clinical and serologic follow-ups of infants judged to be a high risk because of intimate maternal exposure to vaccine virus revealed no late manifestations of congenital rubella infection. A history of close maternal contact with vaccinees during the three months before and the three months following conception was not associated with an increased incidence of congenital anomalies or clinical features seen with congenital rubella infection. Thus, no evidence of vaccine virus transmission was found, providing further evidence of the safety of rubella vaccine under field conditions. A seroepidemiologic study of 8824 pregnant women revealed the expected decline in rubella susceptibility with increasing age. When age was controlled, the variables of race, parity, and educational achievement produced no major influence on immunity.

Metropolitan Reform: Citizen Evaluations of Performances in Nashville-Davidson County, Tennessee

Nashville-Davidson County provides an excellent laboratory for examining citizen evaluations of the performance of a consolidated metropolitan government. As early as 1951 the Tennessee General Assembly had authorized a Community Services Commission for Davidson County and the City of Nashville to consider solutions to problems in the delivery of public services as a result of the metropolitanization of the Nashville area. That Commission recommended that the City of Nashville annex some 69 square miles of territory and 90,000 residents in suburban areas. To avoid overlap in the delivery of some services, the Commission also called for Davidson County to assume complete responsibility for the delivery of public health, hospital care for indigents, public schools and public welfare. Those were services that the Commission believed to be appropriate for countywide provision.' Both civic and business leaders considered the Commission's recommendations to be halfway measures and succeeded in getting the newly elected Mayor of Nashville and the Davidson County Judge to give some support to the concept of city-county consolidation as a mechanism for achieving metropolitan reform.2

Metropolitan Reform: Citizen Evaluations of Performances in Nashville-Davidson County, Tennessee

Metropolitan Reform: Citizen Evaluations of Performances in Nashville-Davidson County, Tennessee

An air resource management program for the Nashville metropolitan area

A comprehensive study of air pollution levels; the effects on health, visibility and public opinion; sources of pollutants; and the relationships among air pollution, meteorology and topography was conducted in Nashville-Davidson County, Tennessee. Principal sources of sulfur dioxide are use of coal and industrial processes. Major sources of particulate matter are industrial processes and use of coal. Other emissions are tabulated. Pollution by sulfur dioxide and particulate matter is excessive during the winter space heating season. Extensive data are summarized on these pollutants, dustfall and carcinogens. Relationships between pollution levels and anthracosis, bronchial asthma, morbidity, respiratory disease mortality and cardiovascular disease mortality are summarized. Visibility obstruction is tabulated and the opinions of people indicating their awareness and concern about air pollution are described. A detailed discussion of an air resource management program include proposed air quality goals, emission regulations, and program activities. Brief mention is made of application of a mathematical atmospheric dispersion model to air and land-use planning.