Assessing potential benefits of visits to neighborhoods with higher tree canopy coverage using mobility data: Associations with cardiovascular health outcomes in twenty US metropolitan areas.

Background: Research on health benefits due to exposure to green space, such as tree canopy coverage, has predominantly focused on canopy coverage in home neighborhoods. Yet exposures to tree canopy coverage in other spaces visited during the week or on weekends outside the home neighborhoods remains largely unexplored.

Objectives: We examined whether differences in coverage levels of tree canopy in neighborhoods visited compared to home neighborhoods was associated with lower prevalence of coronary heart disease (CHD) and stroke, adjusting for exposure to home canopy coverage.

State-Level Firearm Laws and Firearm Homicide in US Cities: Heterogenous Associations by City Characteristics.

Despite well-studied associations of state firearm laws with lower state- and county-level firearm homicide, there is a shortage of studies investigating differences in the effects of distinct state firearm law categories on various cities within the same state using identical methods. We examined associations of 5 categories of state firearm laws-pertaining to buyers, dealers, domestic violence, gun type/trafficking, and possession-with city-level firearm homicide, and then tested differential associations by city characteristics. City-level panel data on firearm homicide cases of 78 major cities from 2010 to 2020 was assessed from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Vital Statistics System.

Association between racial residential segregation and walkability in 745 U.S. cities.

Despite higher chronic disease prevalence, minoritized populations live in highly walkable neighborhoods in US cities more frequently than non-minoritized populations. We investigated whether city-level racial residential segregation (RRS) was associated with city-level walkability, stratified by population density, possibly explaining this counterintuitive association. RRS for Black-White and Latino-White segregation in large US cities was calculated using the Index of Dissimilarity (ID), and walkability was measured using WalkScore.

Validation of a geospatial aggregation method for congressional districts and other US administrative geographies.

Stakeholders need data on health and drivers of health parsed to the boundaries of essential policy-relevant geographies. US Congressional Districts are an example of a policy-relevant geography which generally lack health data. One strategy to generate Congressional District heath data metric estimates is to aggregate estimates from other geographies, for example, from counties or census tracts to Congressional Districts.

AddREssing Social Determinants TO pRevent hypErtension (The RESTORE Network): Overview of the Health Equity Research Network to Prevent Hypertension.

Background: The American Heart Association funded a Health Equity Research Network on the prevention of hypertension, the RESTORE Network, as part of its commitment to achieving health equity in all communities. This article provides an overview of the RESTORE Network.

Methods: The RESTORE Network includes five independent, randomized trials testing approaches to implement non-pharmacological interventions that have been proven to lower blood pressure (BP).

Life Expectancy and Built Environments in the U.S.: A Multilevel Analysis.

Introduction: The purpose of this study is to examine the associations between built environments and life expectancy across a gradient of urbanicity in the U.S.

Methods: Census tract‒level estimates of life expectancy between 2010 and 2015, except for Maine and Wisconsin, from the U.

Validation of a neighborhood-level COVID Local Risk Index in 47 large U.S. cities.

Objectives: To present the COVID Local Risk Index (CLRI), a measure of city- and neighborhood-level risk for SARS COV-2 infection and poor outcomes, and validate it using sub-city SARS COV-2 outcome data from 47 large U.S. cities.

Neighborhood-level Asian American Populations, Social Determinants of Health, and Health Outcomes in 500 US Cities.

Introduction: The US Asian American (AA) population is projected to double by 2050, reaching ~43 million, and currently resides primarily in urban areas. Despite this, the geographic distribution of AA subgroup populations in US cities is not well-characterized, and social determinants of health (SDH) and health measures in places with significant AA/AA subgroup populations have not been described. Our research aimed to: 1) map the geographic distribution of AAs and AA subgroups at the city- and neighborhood- (census tract) level in 500 large US cities (population ≥66,000); 2) characterize SDH and health outcomes in places with significant AA or AA subgroup populations; and 3) compare SDH and health outcomes in places with significant AA or AA subgroup populations to SDH and health outcomes in places with significant non-Hispanic White (NHW) populations.

Health and Health Determinant Metrics for Cities: A Comparison of County and City-Level Data.

We evaluated whether using county-level data to characterize public health measures in cities biases the characterization of city populations. We compared 4 public health and sociodemographic measures in 447 US cities (percent of children living in poverty, percent of non-Hispanic Black population, age-adjusted cardiovascular disease mortality, life expectancy at birth) to the same measures calculated for counties that contain those cities. We found substantial and highly variable city-county differences within and across metrics, which suggests that use of county data to proxy city measures could hamper accurate allocation of public health resources and appreciation of the urgency of public health needs in specific locales.

Food environment does not predict self-reported SSB consumption in New York City: A cross sectional study.

The purpose of this research was to examine whether the local food environment, specifically the distance to the nearest sugar sweetened beverage (SSB) vendor, a measure of SSB availability and accessibility, was correlated with the likelihood of self-reported SSB consumption among a sample of fast food consumers. As part of a broader SSB behavior study in 2013-2014, respondents were surveyed outside of major chain fast food restaurants in New York City (NYC). Respondents were asked for the intersection closest to their home and how frequently they consume SSBs.