Changing the housing environment to reduce obesity in public housing residents: a cluster randomized trial.

Background: Public housing residents face significant social, economic, and physical barriers to the practice of health behaviors for prevention of chronic disease. Research shows that public housing residents are more likely to report higher rates of obesity, current smoking, disability, and insufficient physical activity compared to individuals not living in public housing. Because these behaviors and conditions may be shaped by the built and social environments in which they live, we conducted a study to test an environmental level diet and physical activity intervention targeting obesity among urban public housing developments.

Resident health advocates in public housing family developments.

Translation of research to practice often needs intermediaries to help the process occur. Our Prevention Research Center has identified a total of 89 residents of public housing in the last 11 years who have been working in the Resident Health Advocate (RHA) program to engage residents in improving their own and other residents' health status by becoming trained in skills needed by community health workers. Future directions include training for teens to become Teen RHAs and further integration of our RHA program with changes in the health care system and in the roles of community health workers in general.

Enhancing physical and social environments to reduce obesity among public housing residents: rationale, trial design, and baseline data for the Healthy Families study.

Intervention programs that change environments have the potential for greater population impact on obesity compared to individual-level programs. We began a cluster randomized, multi-component multi-level intervention to improve weight, diet, and physical activity among low-socioeconomic status public housing residents. Here we describe the rationale, intervention design, and baseline survey data.

What do public housing residents say about their health?

Background: Residents of public housing have poorer health indicators than comparably resourced individuals from the larger community.

Objectives: To identify major health concerns, issues, and barriers to health of community members living in public housing developments, especially as related to cardiovascular disease prevention. To identify similarities and differences between data collected using two methods to inform future health promotion programs and policies.

Connecting Boston's public housing developments to community health centers: who's ready for change?

Background: Despite close proximity to community health centers, public housing residents are at increased risk of uncontrolled chronic disease, in part because of underutilization of routine health care.

Objectives: To assist in program planning, the Partners in Health and Housing Prevention Research Center (PHH-PRC) used the Community Readiness Model to compare readiness of public housing developments and community health centers to address community-identified health priorities. The model assumes that program success to affect change depends on matching the community's level of readiness to address the issue.