Integrating Grey and Green Infrastructure to Improve the Health and Well-being of Urban Populations

One of the enduring lessons of cities is the essential relationship between grey infrastructure (e.g., streets and buildings) and green infrastructure (e.g., parks and open spaces). The design and management of natural resources to enhance human health and well-being may be traced back thousands of years to the earliest urban civilizations. From the irrigation projects of the Indus Valley and the aqueducts of the Roman Empire to integrated systems of landscaped urban parks and street trees in contemporary times, humans have sought to harness the capacity of nature to advance city life. This article presents a systems science framework that delineates critical relationships between grey and green elements of cities and human health and well-being by modeling the complex, dynamic problem of asthma in socioeconomically disadvantaged city neighborhoods. By understanding the underlying structure of urban spaces and the importance of social interactions, urban planners, public health officials, and community members may capitalize on opportunities to leverage resources to improve the health and well-being of urban populations and promote social justice and health equity

The relationship of readiness factors to Jan. first grade reading achievement

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston Universit

Introducing a Longitudinal Study of Community Gardeners and Gardens in New York City

For almost a decade, the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation GreenThumb program has collected data about hundreds of New York City community gardens citywide to understand how these gardens function. Building on a data set that includes surveys and interviews conducted periodically with garden representatives since 2003, GreenThumb and USDA Forest Service researchers have conducted a new round of community garden interviews examining membership, programming, partnerships, and motivations for gardening. This comprehensive study of the largest community gardening program in the United States aims to understand the evolving role of community gardens in New York City. The study asks: From 2003-2011, is gardeners’ motivation for creating and participating in community gardens persistent or changing? How do the use and social functions of community gardens evolve or remain the same? What sort of programs and community events are held in gardens? How has garden membership changed over time? Is membership increasing, decreasing, or staying the same? Who participates in gardening in neighborhoods with changing demographics? During the summer of 2011, structured interviews were conducted by phone with representatives from a sample of 102 community gardens for which survey data existed from 2003, 2007, and 2009. These research findings will help assess the ways in which New York City community gardens have evolved and can continue to grow in the future

Estimating fishing effort from highly resolved geospatial data : focusing on passive gears

TM, JM and MJ appreciate the financial support provided by the University of St. Andrews Impact and Innovation Fund 2018. TM and MJ acknowledge financial support provided by the “Conserving Atlantic Biodiversity by Supporting Innovative Small-scale Fisheries Co-management” (CABFISHMAN) Project. This project is co-financed by the Interreg Atlantic Area Programme through the European Regional Development Fund. Project N°: EAPA_134/2018”.Increasing competition for marine space requires the appropriate development of indicators to best represent the use of marine areas and the value (whether economic, social and/or cultural) derived from such use. Fishers (the largest group of users) are often under-represented in marine spatial planning processes. Highly-resolved vessel tracking data provide opportunities to map the activities of fishing vessels at a level of detail never before available. Most effort mapping methods have focused on active gears such as trawls or dredges in large scale fisheries. For these fisheries, the time spent fishing at sea (hours) is usually a representative indicator of fishing effort, enabling a straightforward mapping of the most important fishing grounds. However, for passive gears generally used in small-scale fisheries, we show that spatial indicators of effort (here, length of vessel track) greatly outperform time-at-sea as an indicator of fishing effort. We further demonstrate and validate a method to estimate gear soak time from vessel tracking data and show how maps of effort that account for soak time can be different from those solely based on time spent fishing at sea. The development of adequate methods to quantify the spatial distribution of passive gear effort is particularly relevant to fisheries management because globally about a fifth of all catches (by weight) are landed by passive gears. Appropriate, fine scale effort maps will provide better tools for spatial planning to support sustainable fishing.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Establishing the sensitivity of cetaceans and seals to acoustic deterrent devices in Scotland

The aim of the project is to provide the capability to establish potential risks to cetaceans and seals from the use of acoustic deterrent devices in Scottish waters. Acoustic Deterrent Devices (ADDs) are often used on aquaculture sites to reduce predation of seals on fish stocks using acoustic emissions. These acoustic emissions may also have secondary effects on marine mammals (including non-target species) ranging from physical injury, behavioural response and reduced sensory capability. In this project, an attempt is made to investigate the effects of water depth, seabed sediment type and bathymetry on the propagation and received levels of ADDs. It also examines the implications of simplified modelling approaches and associated prediction of a ‘zone of potential risk’. A generalised sensitivity model has been developed to allow prediction of the range to exceed predetermined thresholds (e.g. for hearing injury) based on sound pressure levels and cumulative sound exposure levels for user defined impact criteria based on ADD type, local environments and functional hearing capabilities of species present in Scotland

Using focus groups to design systems science models that promote oral health equity

Background While the US population overall has experienced improvements in oral health over the past 60 years, oral diseases remain among the most common chronic conditions across the life course. Further, lack of access to oral health care contributes to profound and enduring oral health inequities worldwide. Vulnerable and underserved populations who commonly lack access to oral health care include racial/ethnic minority older adults living in urban environments. The aim of this study was to use a systematic approach to explicate cause and effect relationships in creating a causal map, a type of concept map in which the links between nodes represent causality or influence. Methods To improve our mental models of the real world and devise strategies to promote oral health equity, methods including system dynamics, agent-based modeling, geographic information science, and social network simulation have been leveraged by the research team. The practice of systems science modeling is situated amidst an ongoing modeling process of observing the real world, formulating mental models of how it works, setting decision rules to guide behavior, and from these heuristics, making decisions that in turn affect the state of the real world. Qualitative data were obtained from focus groups conducted with community-dwelling older adults who self-identify as African American, Dominican, or Puerto Rican to elicit their lived experiences in accessing oral health care in their northern Manhattan neighborhoods. Results The findings of this study support the multi-dimensional and multi-level perspective of access to oral health care and affirm a theorized discrepancy in fit between available dental providers and patients. The lack of information about oral health at the community level may be compromising the use and quality of oral health care among racial/ethnic minority older adults. Conclusions Well-informed community members may fill critical roles in oral health promotion, as they are viewed as highly credible sources of information and recommendations for dental providers. The next phase of this research will involve incorporating the knowledge gained from this study into simulation models that will be used to explore alternative paths toward improving oral health and health care for racial/ethnic minority older adults

A Rapid Assessment Scorecard to Identify Informal Settlements at Higher Maternal and Child Health Risk in Mumbai

The communities who live in urban informal settlements are diverse, as are their environmental conditions. Characteristics include inadequate access to safe water and sanitation, poor quality of housing, overcrowding, and insecure residential status. Interventions to improve health should be equity-driven and target those at higher risk, but it is not clear how to prioritise informal settlements for health action. In implementing a maternal and child health programme in Mumbai, India, we had conducted a detailed vulnerability assessment which, though important, was time-consuming and may have included collection of redundant information. Subsequent data collection allowed us to examine three issues: whether community environmental characteristics were associated with maternal and newborn healthcare and outcomes; whether it was possible to develop a triage scorecard to rank the health vulnerability of informal settlements based on a few rapidly observable characteristics; and whether the scorecard might be useful for future prioritisation. The City Initiative for Newborn Health documented births in 48 urban slum areas over 2 years. Information was collected on maternal and newborn care and mortality, and also on household and community environment. We selected three outcomes—less than three antenatal care visits, home delivery, and neonatal mortality—and used logistic regression and classification and regression tree analysis to test their association with rapidly observable environmental characteristics. We developed a simple triage scorecard and tested its utility as a means of assessing maternal and newborn health risk. In analyses on a sample of 10,754 births, we found associations of health vulnerability with inadequate access to water, toilets, and electricity; non-durable housing; hazardous location; and rental tenancy. A simple scorecard based on these had limited sensitivity and positive predictive value, but relatively high specificity and negative predictive value. The scorecard needs further testing in a range of urban contexts, but we intend to use it to identify informal settlements in particular need of family health interventions in a subsequent program