Journal of urban health : bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine
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Childhood obesity is a precursor to future health complications. In adults, neighborhood walkability is inversely associated with obesity prevalence. Recently, it has been shown that current urban walkability has been influenced by historical discriminatory neighborhood disinvestment. ⋯ There was a significant association between child BMI and redlining (β: 1.36, 95% CI: 0.106, 2.620). We did not find an association between walkability measures and childhood obesity outcomes. We propose that cities such as Denver pursue built environment policies, such as inclusionary zoning and direct investments in neighborhoods that have been historically neglected, to reduce the childhood health impacts of segregated poverty, and suggest further studies on the influences that redlining and urban built environment factors have on childhood obesity.
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Review
Healthy Community Design, Anti-displacement, and Equity Strategies in the USA: A Scoping Review.
Recent investments in built environment infrastructure to create healthy communities have highlighted the need for equity and environmental justice. Although the benefits of healthy community design (e.g., connecting transportation systems and land use changes) are well established, some reports suggest that these changes may increase property values. These increases can raise the risk of displacement for people with low incomes and/or who are from racial and ethnic minority groups, who would then miss out on benefits from changes in community design. ⋯ The indexed literature search identified 6 articles, and the grey literature scan added 18 articles. From these 24 total articles, we identified 141 mitigation and prevention strategies for displacement and thematically characterized each by domain using an adapted existing typology. This work provides a well-categorized inventory for practitioners and sets the stage for future evaluation research on the implementation of strategies and practices to reduce displacement.
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Urban environments shape early childhood exposures, experiences, and health behaviors, including outdoor free play, influencing the physical, cognitive, social, and emotional development of young children. We examined evidence for urban or suburban built environment influences on outdoor free play in 0-6-year-olds, considering potential differences across gender, culture, and geography. We systematically searched seven literature databases for relevant qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods studies: of 5740 unique studies, 53 met inclusion criteria. ⋯ Proximity to formal or informal space for play, protection from traffic, pedestrian environment, green and natural environments, and opportunity for social connection supported outdoor free play. Family and community social context influenced perceptions of and use of space; however, we did not find consistent, gendered differences in built environment correlates of outdoor free play. Across diverse contexts, playable neighborhoods for young children provided nearby space for play, engaging routes protected from traffic and facilitated frequent interaction between people, nature, and structures.
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Early in the pandemic, New York City's public hospital system partnered with multiple philanthropic foundations to offer an unconditional cash transfer program for low-income New Yorkers affected by COVID-19. The $1000 cash transfers were designed to help people meet their most immediate health and social needs and were incorporated into healthcare delivery and contact tracing workflows as a response to the public health emergency. To better understand program recipients' experiences, researchers conducted 150 telephone surveys with randomly sampled cash transfer recipients and 20 in-depth qualitative interviews with purposefully sampled survey participants. ⋯ Most participants (79%) reported that without the $1000 cash transfer they would have had difficulty paying for basic expenses or making ends meet, with specific positive effects reported related to food, housing, and ability to work. The majority of survey participants reported that receiving the cash assistance somewhat or greatly improved their physical health (83%) and mental health (89%). Qualitative interview results generally supported the survey findings.