Back to Annual Meeting

Back to Annual Meeting

APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Recorded presentation

Marc N. Elliott, PhD¹, Steven Kinchen², Luisa Franzini, PhD³, Narayan Sastry, PhD¹, Michael Windle, PhD⁴, Marika Suttorp, MS¹, Tariq Qureshi, MD⁵, M. Janice Gilliland, PhD⁶, Eliana Turk, MPH, MD⁷, Timothy L. McManus, MS⁸, and Mark A. Schuster, MD, PhD¹. (1) RAND, 1776 Main Street, P.O. Box 2138, Santa Monica, CA 90407, 310-393-0411, elliott@rand.org, (2) Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 4770 Buford Highway, Atlanta, GA 30341, (3) Management, policy and community health, University of Texas School of Public Health, 1200 Pressler Drive, Houston, TX 77401, (4) Director of the Center for the Advancement of Youth Health, University of Alabama at Birmingham, 912 Building, 1530 3rd Avenue S., Birmingham, AL 35294, (5) [CDC sub-contractor] Business Computer Applications, Northorp Grummnan/CIO-SP2i2447, 2002 Permimeter Summit Blvd, Suite 880, Atlanta, GA 30319, (6) Center for the Advancement of Youth Health, University of Alabama at Birmingham, 912 Building, 1530 3rd Avenue S., Birmingham, AL 35294, (7) University of Texas at Houston, 7000 Fannin Street, Suite 2610J, Houston, TX 77030, (8) Northrop Grumman/CIO-SP2i 2447, CDC Subcontractor, 3375 NE Expressway, Koger Center Harvard Bldg., Atlanta, GA 30341

An initial cross-sectional phase of Healthy Passages (a longitudinal study of adolescent health) was conducted in Birmingham, Houston, and Los Angeles. A two-stage probability sample stratified by race/ethnicity of 650 5th grade students from 21 schools was selected. For each student, two observers rated aspects of their residential blockface . A blockface is typically the portion of a residential block between two street corners, although analogues exist in non-urban settings.

The observers rated 41 physical characteristics (e.g. condition of private and public spaces) and 23 social characteristics (e.g. types of people present), and then the ratings were averaged across the two observers. Factor analysis of physical observations suggested three scales: “commercial activity” (CA) (e.g., traffic flow on street), “residential decay” (RD) (e.g., condition of residential buildings), and “residential security” (RS) (e.g., window bars on residences) with coefficient alphas of 0.7-0.9 and Spearman-Brown reliabilities of 0.9-1.0. Scales were approximately normally distributed, without outliers, ceiling effects, or floor effects. Social observations depended upon the time of observation and were therefore insufficiently reliable for scale development.

General linear models predicted the three scales, using fixed effects for schools within sites and individual-level race-ethnicity, parent education, and household income. All scales varied significantly at the school level, with less variation for CA. CA and RS were considerably lower in Birmingham than the other two sites (p<0.001 for all). As income increased, CA (p<0.001) and RD (p<0.05) decreased, and RS increased (p<0.05). Education and race-ethnicity did not predict any neighborhood measures after controlling for income.

Learning Objectives:

• 1) Describe the content and development of neighborhood observation measures.
• 2) Describe the variation of these measures by school catchment areas and cities.
• 3) Describe the association of these measures with socioeconomic status and race-ethnicity.

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Any relevant financial relationships? No

Recorded presentation