No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

As their most critical limitation, neighborhood and health studies published to date have not taken into account nonresidential activity places where individuals travel in their daily lives. However, identifying low-mobility populations residing in low-resource environments, assessing cumulative environmental exposures over multiple activity places, and identifying specific activity locations for targeting interventions are important for health promotion. Daily mobility has not been given due consideration in part because of a lack of tools to collect locational information on activity spaces. Thus, the first aim of the current article is to describe VERITAS (Visualization and Evaluation of Route Itineraries, Travel Destinations, and Activity Spaces), an interactive web mapping application that can geolocate individuals' activity places, routes between locations, and relevant areas such as experienced or perceived neighborhoods. The second aim is to formalize the theoretic grounds of a contextual expology as a subdiscipline to better assess the spatiotemporal configuration of environmental exposures. Based on activity place data, various indicators of individual patterns of movement in space (spatial behavior) are described. Successive steps are outlined for elaborating variables of multiplace environmental exposure (collection of raw locational information, selection/exclusion of locational data, defining an exposure area for measurement, and calculation). Travel and activity place network areas are discussed as a relevant construct for environmental exposure assessment. Finally, a note of caution is provided that these measures require careful handling to avoid increasing the magnitude of confounding (selective daily mobility bias).

No abstract

ABSTRACTBackground:There is growing evidence that neighborhood environments are related to depressive mood in the general population. Older adults may be even more vulnerable to neighborhood factors than other adults. The aim of this paper is to review empirical findings on the relationships between neighborhood characteristics and depressive mood among older adults.Methods:A search of the literature was undertaken in PsycINFO and MEDLINE.Results:Nineteen studies were identified. Study designs were most often cross-sectional, included large sample sizes, and controlled for major individual characteristics. Mediational effects were not investigated. Statistical analysis strategies often included multilevel models. Spatial delimitations of neighborhood of residence were usually based on administrative and statistical spatial boundaries. Six neighborhood characteristics were assessed most often: neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage, neighborhood poverty, affluence, racial/ethnic composition, residential stability, and elderly concentration. Selected neighborhood characteristics were associated with depressive mood after adjusting for individual variables. These associations were generally theoretically meaningful.Conclusions:Neighborhood variables seem to make a unique and significant contribution to the understanding of depressive mood among older adults. However, few studies investigated these associations and replication of results is needed. Several substantive neighborhood variables have been ignored or neglected in the literature. The implications of neighborhood effects for knowledge advancement and public health interventions remain unclear. Recommendations for future research are discussed.

BackgroundFood- and activity-related establishments are increasingly viewed as neighbourhood resources that potentially condition health-related behaviour. The primary objective of the current study was to establish, using ground truthing (on-site verification), the validity of measures of availability of food stores and physical activity establishments that were obtained from commercial database and Internet searches. A secondary objective was to examine differences in validity results according to neighbourhood characteristics and commercial establishment categories.MethodsLists of food stores and physical activity-related establishments in 12 census tracts within the Montreal metropolitan region were compiled using a commercial database (n = 171 establishments) and Internet search engines (n = 123 establishments). Ground truthing through field observations was performed to assess the presence of listed establishments and identify those absent. Percentage agreement, sensitivity (proportion of establishments found in the field that were listed), and positive predictive value (proportion of listed establishments found in the field) were calculated and contrasted according to data sources, census tracts characteristics, and establishment categories.ResultsAgreement with field observations was good (0.73) for the commercial list, and moderate (0.60) for the Internet-based list. The commercial list was superior to the Internet-based list for correctly listing establishments present in the field (sensitivity), but slightly inferior in terms of the likelihood that a listed establishment was present in the field (positive predictive value). Agreement was higher for food stores than for activity-related establishments.ConclusionCommercial data sources may provide a valid alternative to field observations and could prove a valuable tool in the evaluation of commercial environments relevant to eating behaviour. In contrast, this study did not find strong evidence in support of commercial and Internet data sources to represent neighbourhood opportunities for active lifestyle.

No abstract