Journal of urban health : bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine
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There is growing evidence on the effect of face mask use in controlling the spread of COVID-19. However, few studies have examined the effect of local face mask policies on the pandemic. In this study, we developed a dynamic compartmental model of COVID-19 transmission in New York City (NYC), which was the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic in the USA. ⋯ If the executive order was implemented 1 week earlier (on April 10), the averted infections and deaths would be 111,475 (81,593-141,356) and 9017 (6446-11,589), respectively. If the executive order was implemented 2 weeks earlier (on April 3 when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended face mask use), the averted infections and deaths would be 128,598 (94,373-162,824) and 10,515 (7540-13,489), respectively. Our study provides public health practitioners and policymakers with evidence on the importance of implementing face mask policies in local areas as early as possible to control the spread of COVID-19 and reduce mortality.
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Police stops are the most common form of criminal justice exposure in the USA, and are particularly common among urban youth, with 23% of them reporting a stop by the age of 15. While recent work has begun to illuminate the health impacts of police stops for these youth, little is known about the health consequences of youth police contact for the mothers of youth stopped by the police. The current study employs data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS), a sample of urban, at-risk youth and their families. ⋯ Furthermore, stops with certain features-including those characterized by intrusiveness, high trauma, and high stigma-emerged as consistently significant predictors of maternal sleep difficulties. The findings suggest that mothers who are vicariously exposed to police contact via their children are a vulnerable group. Given the non-random distribution of police contact across the population of youth, with police contact concentrated among children of color, the findings suggest that police contact may exacerbate racial inequalities in sleep, which may itself contribute to racial disparities in broader mental and physical health outcomes.
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Stroke exerts a massive burden on the US health and economy. Place-based evidence is increasingly recognized as a critical part of stroke management, but identifying the key determinants of neighborhood stroke prevalence and the underlying effect mechanisms is a topic that has been treated sparingly in the literature. We aim to fill in the research gaps with a study focusing on urban health. ⋯ The effects of five major determinants varied geographically and were significantly stronger among neighborhoods with high prevalence of stroke. Highly flexible machine learning identifies true drivers of neighborhood cardiovascular health outcomes from wide-ranging information in an agnostic and reproducible way. The identified major determinants and the effect mechanisms can provide important avenues for prioritizing and allocating resources to develop optimal community-level interventions for stroke prevention.
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Between 2013 and 2016, the Chicago Park District renovated 327 playgrounds in need of repair across Chicago through a $44 million investment. This study evaluated whether short-term and longer-term impacts of renovations on park use and park-based moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) differed by neighborhood income level and neighborhood concentration of Black residents. A total of 39 parks with renovated playgrounds and 39 matched comparison parks with playgrounds that needed repair but not selected for renovation in year 1 were studied. ⋯ Renovations were generally not associated with any changes in park use or park-based MVPA in high-percent Black neighborhoods, but they were associated with increased park use and park-based MVPA in low-percent Black neighborhoods. This study suggests playground renovations in Chicago may have had unintended consequences, increasing neighborhood income and racial disparities in park use and park-based MVPA. Future playground renovation efforts may need to allocate more resources for renovating the broader park where in disrepair, more intensely involve neighborhood residents, and employ complementary strategies such as additional park programming to ensure renovations benefit all neighborhoods.
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Geographic inequalities in COVID-19 diagnosis are now well documented. However, we do not sufficiently know whether inequalities are related to social characteristics of communities, such as collective engagement. We tested whether neighborhood social cohesion is associated with inequalities in COVID-19 diagnosis rate and the extent the association varies across neighborhood racial composition. ⋯ In contrast, areas with <41% of Black people, higher engagement was associated with a 26% lower diagnosis rate (IRR=0.74, 95%CI=0.67, 0.82). Neighborhood social cohesion is associated with both higher and lower COVID-19 diagnosis rates, and the extent of associations varies across Black neighborhood racial composition. We recommend some strategies for reducing inequalities based on the segmentation model within the social cohesion and public health intervention framework.