Linking social and built environmental factors to the health of public housing residents: a focus group study

BMC Public Health

Research Article

Chidinma Ibe¹  Paul Jones²  Erin Hayward²  Jeffery Hunter Young³  Craig Evan Pollack⁴  Kimberly A Gudzune⁵  Karthya Potti⁶ 

[1] Johns Hopkins Health Care, LLC, Baltimore, MD, USA;Department of Health Policy and Management, The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD, USA;The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA;The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA;Johns Hopkins Health Care, LLC, Baltimore, MD, USA;Welch Center for Prevention, Epidemiology, and Clinical Research, Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, Baltimore, MD, USA;Department of Epidemiology, The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD, USA;The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA;Welch Center for Prevention, Epidemiology, and Clinical Research, Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, Baltimore, MD, USA;Department of Epidemiology, The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD, USA;The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA;Welch Center for Prevention, Epidemiology, and Clinical Research, Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, Baltimore, MD, USA;Division of General Internal Medicine, Department of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University, 2024 E. Monument St, Room 2-621, 21287, Baltimore, MD, USA;University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA;

关键词: Urban health;    Public housing;    Social determinants of health;    Environmental health;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12889-015-1710-9

 received in 2014-11-06, accepted in 2015-03-30,  发布年份 2015

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundPublic housing residents have a high risk of chronic disease, which may be related to neighborhood environmental factors. Our objective was to understand how public housing residents perceive that the social and built environments might influence their health and wellbeing.MethodsWe conducted focus groups of residents from a low-income public housing community in Baltimore, MD to assess their perceptions of health and neighborhood attributes, resources, and social structure. Focus groups were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. Two investigators independently coded transcripts for thematic content using editing style analysis technique.ResultsTwenty-eight residents participated in six focus groups. All were African American and the majority were women. Most had lived in public housing for more than 5 years. We identified four themes: public housing’s unhealthy physical environment limits health and wellbeing, the city environment limits opportunities for healthy lifestyle choices, lack of trust in relationships contributes to social isolation, and increased neighborhood social capital could improve wellbeing.ConclusionsChanges in housing and city policies might lead to improved environmental health conditions for public housing residents. Policymakers and researchers may consider promoting community cohesiveness to attempt to empower residents in facilitating neighborhood change.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Hayward et al.; licensee BioMed Central. 2015. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.