Journal of urban health : bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine
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Virtual audits using Google Street View are an increasingly popular method of assessing neighborhood environments for health and urban planning research. However, the validity of these studies may be threatened by issues of image availability, image age, and variance of image age, particularly in the Global South. This study identifies patterns of Street View image availability, image age, and image age variance across cities in Latin America and assesses relationships between these measures and measures of resident socioeconomic conditions. ⋯ Subcity units with higher scores on measures of socioeconomic conditions had higher rates of image availability (OR = 1.11 per point increase of combined index, p < 0.001) and the imagery was newer on average (- 1.15 months per point increase of combined index, p < 0.001), but image capture date within these areas varied more (0.59-month increase in standard deviation of image age per point increase of combined index, p < 0.001). All three assessed threats to the validity of Street View virtual audit studies spatially covary with measures of socioeconomic conditions in Latin American cities. Researchers should be attentive to these issues when using Street View imagery.
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Alcohol outlet oversaturation often exacerbates negative public health outcomes. Recently, Baltimore City passed an extensive zoning rewrite ("TransForm Baltimore") that sought to give local government and residents a tool to reduce alcohol outlet oversaturation through land use regulation. The present investigation evaluated the outlet and neighborhood characteristics of stores impacted by two components of TransForm Baltimore: (1) a requirement that taverns licensed for on-premise consumption in addition to off-premise, carryout sales generate at least 50% of their business from on-premise sales, and (2) a requirement to close, repurpose, or relocate all package stores (i.e., off-premise alcohol outlets) that have been operating as "non-conforming" in residential zones since 1971. ⋯ These non-conforming alcohol outlets were disproportionately distributed in predominately poor and African American communities (t test; p < 0.05). As compared to conforming alcohol outlets, more non-conforming alcohol outlets sold sex paraphernalia and healthy foods (chi-square test; p < 0.05). With active enforcement, TransForm Baltimore offers the opportunity for local government and residents to improve public health and increase health equity in vulnerable and marginalized neighborhoods.
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Effective responses to a global pandemic require local action. In the face of a pandemic or similar emergencies, communities of people who use drugs face risks that result from their ongoing drug use, reduced ability to secure treatment for drug use and correlated maladies, lack of access to preventive hygiene, and the realities of homelessness, street-level policing, and criminal justice involvement. ⋯ The section describing each of the risks demonstrates how the coalition acted preemptively at early stages of the pandemic, ahead of official initiatives, to develop ameliorative risk reduction solutions. Outcomes discussed include instances in which obstacles were overcome or still remain.
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Several types of resources coexist for coordinated action and systemic responses to this extraordinary situation--administrative, behavioural, financial, health care, legal and medical resources--that have been used at different geo-political levels, sometimes in an uncoordinated fashion of 'winner takes all'.