Developing a Model Curriculum for a University Course in Health Impact Assessment in the United States

As Health Impact Assessment (HIA) become increasingly common in the U.S. there is growing demand for instruction beyond sho1i courses and online training. As of October 2013, there are graduate level courses that include instruction on HIA in at least 17 universities in the U.S., including 4 courses that focus explicitly on HIA. Instructors of these four courses collaborated to develop a model curriculum for teaching HIA that draws on a framework for experiential learning and on a theoretical model of curriculum formulation. This article includes an in-depth analysis of these courses and presents a model curriculum for HIA instruction during an academic quaiier or semester course in a University. This model curriculum may help faculty develop a graduate level HIA course at their institution, as well as inform public health and community design professionals interested in building capacity to conduct HIAs, and students considering taking an HIA course. International instructors could also learn from the U.S. experience, and apply the model curriculum to their setting and educational structure.This work was supported in part by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Faculty Innovation Fund

Understanding subjective well-being: perspectives from psychology and public health

Background Individual subjective well-being (SWB) is essential for creating and maintaining healthy, productive societies. The literature on SWB is vast and dispersed across multiple disciplines. However, few reviews have summarized the theoretical and empirical tenets of SWB literature across disciplinary boundaries. Methods We cataloged and consolidated SWB-related theories and empirical evidence from the fields of psychology and public health using a combination of online catalogs of scholarly articles and online search engines to retrieve relevant articles. For both theories and determinants/correlates of SWB, PubMed, PsychINFO, and Google Scholar were used to obtain relevant articles. Articles for the review were screened for relevance, varied perspectives, journal impact, geographic location of study, and topicality. A core theme of SWB empirical literature was the identification of SWB determinants/correlates, and over 100 research articles were reviewed and summarized for this review. Results We found that SWB theories can be classified into four groups: fulfillment and engagement theories, personal orientation theories, evaluative theories, and emotional theories. A critical analysis of the conflicts and overlaps between these theories reveals the lack of a coherent theoretical and methodological framework that would make empirical research systematically comparable. We found that determinants/correlates of SWB can be grouped into seven broad categories: basic demographics, socioeconomic status, health and functioning, personality, social support, religion and culture, and geography and infrastructure. However, these are rarely studied consistently or used to test theories. Conclusions The lack of a clear, unifying theoretical basis for categorizing and comparing empirical studies can potentially be overcome using an operationalizable criterion that focuses on the dimension of SWB studied, measure of SWB used, design of the study, study population, and types of determinants and correlates. From our review of the empirical literature on SWB, we found that the seven categories of determinants/correlates identified may potentially be used to improve the link between theory and empirical research, and that the overlap in the determinant/correlates as they relate to multiple theory categories may enable us to test theories in unison. However, doing so in the future would require a conscious effort by researchers in several areas, which are discussed

Taxonomy of religious and secular nonprofit organizations: Knowledge development and policy recommendations for neighborhood revitalization

This dissertation is a taxonomy of the role religious and secular nonprofit organizations (NPOs) play in the revitalization of high-poverty neighborhoods. The research contributes to existing knowledge of inner-city revitalization, collaborative planning, organizational theory, and social capital. This study considers the historical policy changes and the resulting growth of the current devolutionary environment that gave rise to Charitable Choice legislation. The organizations emphasized in this study include nonsectarian community-based organizations (CBOs) and both congregations and faith-based organizations (FBOs). The Lower North Philadelphia study area is representative of high-poverty neighborhoods found in other cities and has a significant concentration of congregations, community development corporations, FBOs and other community groups. This work is based on empirical data that documents policy-makers\u27 reliance on local community institutions for social service provision. Analysis includes qualitative and quantitative methods combined with spatial evaluation using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology. Findings indicate that, on average, the religious side of the nonprofit sector exhibits a strong presence in communities, contributing substantial amounts of social and physical service delivery. These congregations and FBOs serve equal numbers of people, with significantly smaller budgets. The findings also demonstrate higher densities in the community compared to the major thoroughfare where secular CBOs locate. Policy recommendations stemming from this research emphasize enhancing access to public resources through technical assistance and capacity building. Future study includes additional analysis of individual findings, and the replication of this research in other communities that share similar characteristics. This dissertation contributes to scholarship by further documenting such efforts and by comparing and contrasting the effectiveness of NPOs by type, policies, and practices

Taxonomy of religious and secular nonprofit organizations: Knowledge development and policy recommendations for neighborhood revitalization

This dissertation is a taxonomy of the role religious and secular nonprofit organizations (NPOs) play in the revitalization of high-poverty neighborhoods. The research contributes to existing knowledge of inner-city revitalization, collaborative planning, organizational theory, and social capital. This study considers the historical policy changes and the resulting growth of the current devolutionary environment that gave rise to Charitable Choice legislation. The organizations emphasized in this study include nonsectarian community-based organizations (CBOs) and both congregations and faith-based organizations (FBOs). The Lower North Philadelphia study area is representative of high-poverty neighborhoods found in other cities and has a significant concentration of congregations, community development corporations, FBOs and other community groups. This work is based on empirical data that documents policy-makers\u27 reliance on local community institutions for social service provision. Analysis includes qualitative and quantitative methods combined with spatial evaluation using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology. Findings indicate that, on average, the religious side of the nonprofit sector exhibits a strong presence in communities, contributing substantial amounts of social and physical service delivery. These congregations and FBOs serve equal numbers of people, with significantly smaller budgets. The findings also demonstrate higher densities in the community compared to the major thoroughfare where secular CBOs locate. Policy recommendations stemming from this research emphasize enhancing access to public resources through technical assistance and capacity building. Future study includes additional analysis of individual findings, and the replication of this research in other communities that share similar characteristics. This dissertation contributes to scholarship by further documenting such efforts and by comparing and contrasting the effectiveness of NPOs by type, policies, and practices

Health Impact Assessment in the United States

XXIII, 229 p. 77 illus.online resource

Health Research in the SimTigrate Design Lab

Presented on November 9, 2017 from 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. in the Georgia Tech Architecture Library.PRESENTATION TITLE: "Health Research and ID." Roger Ball is a professor in the School of Industrial Design at Georgia Tech.PRESENTATION TITLE: "Collaboratively Designing Healthy Places". Nisha Botchwey is an Associate Professor in the School of City and Regional Planning at Georgia Tech.PRESENTATION TITLE: "Health and Design Symposium". Jon Sanford is a Professor in the School of Industrial Design and director of the Center for Assistive Technology and Environmental Access (CATEA) at Georgia Tech.PRESENTATION TITLE: "Health Research in the SimTigrate Design Lab". Craig Zimring is a Professor in the School of Architecture and director of the SimTigrate Design Lab at Georgia Tech.Runtime: 64:19 minutesResearch related to health is the largest segment of the College of Design’s research portfolio. This forum will describe several active programs of research related to health and design and examine the intersections among them for potential collaborations

Health Systems: The Next Generation 2019 - Rapid Fire Research Presentations

Presented on November 12, 2019 at 12:30 p.m. in the Kendeda Building for Innovative Sustainable Design, Auditorium.Nisha Botchwey is an Associate Professor of City and Regional Planning and Director of the Healthy Places Lab in the College of Design at the Georgia Institute of Technology.Dr. Yajun Mei is a co-director of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, research Design (BERD) at Georgia Tech for Georgia Clinical & Translational Science 8 Alliance (Georgia CTSA) since 2018, the president of Georgia Chapter of American Statistical Association in 2018-2019, and the director of Master of Science in Statistics for the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering since 2018. Dr. Mei’s research interests include change-point problems and sequential analysis in Mathematical Statistics; sensor networks and information theory in Engineering; as well as longitudinal data analysis, random effects models, and clinical trials in Biostatistics.Dr. Dima Nazzal is responsible for project-based learning in the Industrial Engineering undergraduate curriculum, including the capstone senior design course, and the development and delivery of early design course for sophomores. Her research focuses on the development and application of analytical models to guide decision making in discrete event logistics systems, including semiconductor wafer fabrication facilities, pharmaceutical order fulfillment and distribution centers, energy infrastructure systems, and fresh supply chains.Leanne West, MS, is a Principal Research Scientist and the Chief Engineer of Pediatric Technologies for Georgia Tech. As Chief Engineer, she coordinates research activities related to pediatrics across campus and serves as the technical liaison for the partnership with Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.Yao Xie is an Associate Professor at Georgia Institute of Technology in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering since 2013. Her research interests are statistics, machine learning, and signal processing, in providing the theoretical foundation as well as developing computationally efficient and statistically powerful algorithms.Runtime: 70:32 minute

The Safe Systems Pyramid: A new framework for traffic safety

Introduction: Civil engineers play an outsize role in shaping the built environment, which plays an outsize role in health, especially in transportation safety. While there is growing interest in integrating public health and transportation engineering and planning to improve safety outcomes, existing efforts fall short. Method: We review prior efforts to integrate public health into transportation safety, and frameworks from injury prevention and control and risk management. Result: Based on the Hierarchy of Controls and the Health Impact Pyramid, we present a framework for prioritizing policies and interventions, known as the Safe Systems Pyramid, that contains five ascending levels – Socioeconomic Factors, Built Environment, Latent Safety Measures, Active Measures, and Education. The levels of the framework prioritize increased population health impact and decreased individual effort. Conclusions: Frameworks like “The 3 E’s” emphasize collaboration rather than a change in thinking and action among transportation safety professionals, and do not prioritize specific actions. We argue that Vision Zero and other “Safe Systems” prioritize implementation of policies, programs, and infrastructure to increase population health impact by considering the individual effort necessary to obtain a protective effect. Practical applications: This framework is designed to shift the thinking of engineers, planners, and policy makers that shape the transportation system. We conclude this work by applying the Safe Systems Pyramid to a hypothetical Vision Zero program, highlighting how the framework can be used to prioritize efforts using a Safe Systems approach

How Youth of Color Create Communities of Hope: Connecting Advocacy, Activity, and Neighborhood Change

The primary aim of this paper was to assess the association of after-school club characteristics with changes in physical activity, nutrition, and attitudes in students of color after participating in the "YEAH!" Advocacy-based Physical Activity Program. We examine the strengths of school-based vs. non-school based programs in promoting feelings of self-efficacy and empowerment among students learning to become more physically active-and importantly, also test the strength of how programs that are more connected (to community-based partners) may contribute to students' optimism around policy and public health as it directly affects them. This study examined differences in the youth advocacy training impact across four after-school club types: school-based with community partnerships, school-based without partnerships, non-school-based with community partners, and non-school-based clubs without partnerships. We measured improvements in youth's "optimism for change", "assertiveness" and "decision-making" as related to after school activities and found that non-school-based programs with community partners showed highest positive impact