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Highlighting resource inequality, social processes, and spatial interdependence, this study combines structural characteristics from the 1990 census with a survey of 8,872 Chicago residents in 1995 to predict homicide variations in 1996-1 998 across 343 neighborhoods. Spatial proximity to homicide is strongly related to increased homicide rates, adjusting for internal neighborhood characteristics and prior homicide. Concentrated disadvantage and low collective efficacy-defined as the linkage of social control and cohesion-also independently predict increased homicide. Local organizations, voluntary associations, and frienaYkinship networks appear to be important only insofar as they promote the collective efficacy of residents in achieving social control and cohesion. Spatial dynamics coupled with neighborhood inequalities in social and economic capacity are therefore consequential f o r explaining urban violence.Over the course of the past century, criminological research in the ecological tradition has continually discovered the concentration of interpersonal violence in certain neighborhoods, especially those characterized by

We analyzed key individual, family, and neighborhood factors to assess competing hypotheses regarding racial/ethnic gaps in perpetrating violence. From 1995 to 2002, we collected 3 waves of data on 2974 participants aged 8 [corrected] to 25 years living in 180 Chicago neighborhoods, augmented by a separate community survey of 8782 Chicago residents. The odds of perpetrating violence were 85% higher for Blacks compared with Whites, whereas Latino-perpetrated violence was 10% lower. Yet the majority of the Black-White gap (over 60%) and the entire Latino-White gap were explained primarily by the marital status of parents, immigrant generation, and dimensions of neighborhood social context. The results imply that generic interventions to improve neighborhood conditions and support families may reduce racial gaps in violence.

Most studies examining the relation between residential environment and health have used census-derived measures of neighborhood socioeconomic position (SEP). There is a need to identify specific features of neighborhoods relevant to disease risk, but few measures of these features exist, and their measurement properties are understudied. In this paper, the authors 1) develop measures (scales) of neighborhood environment that are important in cardiovascular disease risk, 2) assess the psychometric and ecometric properties of these measures, and 3) examine individual- and neighborhood-level predictors of these measures. In 2004, data on neighborhood conditions were collected from a telephone survey of 5,988 residents at three US study sites (Baltimore, Maryland; Forsyth County, North Carolina; and New York, New York). Information collected covered seven dimensions of neighborhood environment (aesthetic quality, walking environment, availability of healthy foods, safety, violence, social cohesion, and activities with neighbors). Neighborhoods were defined as census tracts or census clusters. Cronbach's alpha coefficient ranged from 0.73 to 0.83, with test-retest reliabilities of 0.60-0.88. Intraneighborhood correlations were 0.28-0.51, and neighborhood reliabilities were 0.64-0.78 for census tracts for most scales. The neighborhood scales were strongly associated with neighborhood SEP but also provided information distinct from neighborhood SEP. These results illustrate a methodological approach for assessing the measurement properties of neighborhood-level constructs and show that these constructs can be measured reliably.

This study addresses two questions about why neighborhood contexts matter for individuals via a multilevel, spatial analysis of birthweight for 101,662 live births within 342 Chicago neighborhoods. First, what are the mechanisms through which neighborhood structural composition is related to health? The results show that mechanisms related to stress and adaptation (violent crime, reciprocal exchange and participation in local voluntary associations) are the most robust neighborhood-level predictors of birth weight. Second, are contextual influences on health limited to the immediate neighborhood or do they extend to a wider geographic context? The results show that contextual effects on birth weight extend to the social environment beyond the immediate neighborhood, even after adjusting for potentially confounding covariates. These findings suggest that the theoretical understanding and empirical estimation of 'neighborhood effects' on health are bolstered by collecting data on more causally proximate social processes and by taking into account spatial interdependencies among neighborhoods.

The spatial segregation of the U.S. population by socioeconomic position and especially raceethnicity suggests that the social contexts or "neighborhoods" in which people live may substantially contribute to social disparities in hypertension. The Chicago Community Adult Health Study did face-to-face interviews, including direct measurement of blood pressure, with a representative probability sample of adults in Chicago. These data were used to estimate socioeconomic and racialethnic disparities in the prevalence, awareness, treatment, and control of hypertension, and to analyze how these disparities are related to the areas in which people live. Hypertension was significantly negatively associated with neighborhood affluence/gentrification, and adjustments for context eliminated the highly significant disparity between blacks/African-Americans and whites, and reduced the significant educational disparity by 10-15% to borderline statistical significance. Awareness of hypertension was significantly higher in more disadvantaged neighborhoods and in places with higher concentrations of blacks (and lower concentrations of Hispanics and immigrants). Adjustment for context completely eliminated blacks' greater awareness, but slightly accentuated the lesser awareness of Hispanics and the greater levels of awareness among the less educated. There was no consistent evidence of either social disparities in or contextual associations with treatment of hypertension, given awareness. Among those on medication, blacks were only 40-50% as likely as whites to have their hypertension controlled, but context played little or no role in either the level of or disparities in control of hypertension. In sum, residential contexts potentially play a large role in accounting for racial-ethnic, and to a lesser degree, socioeconomic disparities in hypertension

: Neighborhood walkability, food availability, safety, and social cohesion may be mechanisms that link neighborhoods to hypertension.