Year: 2019
Type: article
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: Due to limitations in individual-based explanations of disease, neighborhoods have emerged as an essential component of public health research.Past neighborhood health studies suggest a relationship between housing and health exists.As housing plays a multitude of roles in a neighborhood, these relationships are extremely complex and have limited previous housing intervention studies.Employing neighborhood health and political ecology frameworks, this thesis contributes to current literature by examining changes in adverse birth outcomes after a housing intervention in Columbus, Ohio's Southside neighborhood.Adverse birth outcomes, preterm birth and low birthweight, are ideal outcomes to study neighborhood effects on health, as evidence suggests neighborhood-level factors contribute to the clustering of these outcomes in disadvantaged neighborhoods.Incorporating neighborhood-level measures, I first develop a propensity score model that identifies comparison neighborhoods in Columbus, Ohio that are similar contextually to the Southside at baseline.Second, I employ difference-in-differences modeling to test whether the Southside experienced a greater decrease in adverse birth outcome relative to the identified comparison neighborhoods.Results indicate that the Southside and identified comparison neighborhoods of Columbus had similar measures of neighborhood housing structures, racial segregation, and socioeconomic conditions before the intervention.However, there were no significant differences in adverse birth outcome changes for the Southside relative to these comparison areas.As housing affects numerous health outcomes, future work could employ this comparison selection methodology in other neighborhood-level health analyses.
Author: Jones, Claire Elizabeth
Institution: The Ohio State University
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7021073547