scholarly journals Linking environment and health data to investigate the association between access to unhealthy food and child BMI

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy Mizen ◽  
Sarah Rodgers ◽  
Richard Fry ◽  
Ronan Lyons
Keyword(s):  
Health Data ◽  
Multilevel Regression ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Retail Food Environment ◽  
Environment And Health ◽  
South Wales ◽  
Unhealthy Eating ◽  
Walk To School ◽  
Child Bmi

IntroductionModelling the daily exposure environment provides evidence for policy and practice. However, the dose-response relationship between exposure to food environments and obesity has not been widely investigated. This study investigated whether increased retail food environment (RFE) exposure in children was associated with a larger body mass index (BMI). Objectives and ApproachIndividually tailored environmental exposures were calculated in a GIS for home and school locations, and modelled walking routes to and from school. Exposures were linked to individual level health data in the SAIL databank for a cohort of individuals aged 11-13 years from south Wales who had BMI measurements. A fully adjusted multilevel regression model was fitted to investigate the association of RFE exposure with BMI. Based on the distance individuals lived from school, we investigated differences between children who have the potential to walk to school (“walkers” lived 4.8km). ResultsHome exposure and exposure along the walk to school was significantly greater for children living in deprived catchments, compared with children living in affluent school catchments (t = -5.25, p Conclusion/ImplicationsIncreased BMI was associated with greater RFE exposure along the walk home from school. The findings suggest that the walk home from school should be the focus for developing interventions and policies to discourage unhealthy eating. Research should be undertaken to better understand child purchasing habits.

scholarly journals Daily exposure to the retail food environment and the association with child BMI

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy Mizen ◽  
Sarah Rodgers ◽  
Richard Fry
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Exposure ◽  
Food Environment ◽  
Health Data ◽  
Multilevel Regression ◽  
Household Level ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Daily Exposure ◽  
Retail Food Environment ◽  
Unhealthy Eating ◽  
Retail Food

BackgroundThe dose-response relationship between exposure to food environments and obesity has not been widely investigated. This study examined whether increased retail food environment (RFE) exposure in children was associated with a larger body mass index (BMI). ObjectivesGenerate household level daily exposure to the RFE for children aged 11-13 years and link these environmental exposure with health data in an anonymised data safe haven. MethodsIndividually tailored environmental exposures were calculated in a GIS for home and school locations, and modelled walking routes to and from school. Local Authority food outlet data were used to generate the temporally accurate exposures. Exposures were linked to individual level health data in the SAIL databank for a cohort of individuals from south Wales aged 11-13 years, with BMI measurements. A fully adjusted multilevel regression model was fitted to investigate the association of RFE exposure with BMI. FindingsHome exposure and exposure along the walk to school was significantly greater for children living in deprived catchments, compared with affluent school catchments (t = -5.25, p<0.05; t = -0.277, p<0.05, respectively). The RFE exposure along the walk home was the only environmental exposure positively associated with a higher BMI (0.22, p<0.05). ConclusionsIncreased BMI was associated with greater REF exposure along the walk home from school. The findings suggest that the walk home from school may be important for developing interventions and policies to discourage unhealthy eating. Research should be undertaken to better understand child purchasing habits.

scholarly journals A Multi-level Review of Engineering Ethics Education: Towards a Socio-technical Orientation of Engineering Education for Ethics

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Diana Adela Martin ◽  
Eddie Conlon ◽  
Brian Bowe
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Education ◽  
Ethics Education ◽  
Engineering Ethics ◽  
Theoretical Research ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Multi Level ◽  
Engineering Ethics Education ◽  
Four Levels ◽  
The Individual

AbstractThis paper aims to review the empirical and theoretical research on engineering ethics education, by focusing on the challenges reported in the literature. The analysis is conducted at four levels of the engineering education system. First, the individual level is dedicated to findings about teaching practices reported by instructors. Second, the institutional level brings together findings about the implementation and presence of ethics within engineering programmes. Third, the level of policy situates findings about engineering ethics education in the context of accreditation. Finally, there is the level of the culture of engineering education. The multi-level analysis allows us to address some of the limitations of higher education research which tends to focus on individual actors such as instructors or remains focused on the levels of policy and practice without examining the deeper levels of paradigm and purpose guiding them. Our approach links some of the challenges of engineering ethics education with wider debates about its guiding paradigms. The main contribution of the paper is to situate the analysis of the theoretical and empirical findings reported in the literature on engineering ethics education in the context of broader discussions about the purpose of engineering education and the aims of reform programmes. We conclude by putting forward a series of recommendations for a socio-technical oriented reform of engineering education for ethics.

scholarly journals Food Environments and Hepatocellular Carcinoma Incidence

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (11) ◽  
pp. 5740
Author(s):  
Mimi Ton ◽  
Michael J. Widener ◽  
Peter James ◽  
Trang VoPham
Keyword(s):  
Hepatocellular Carcinoma ◽  
Food Environment ◽  
Variance Estimation ◽  
Cancer Registries ◽  
County Level ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Retail Food Environment ◽  
Food Retailers ◽  
Environment Index ◽  
Rate Ratios

Research into the potential impact of the food environment on liver cancer incidence has been limited, though there is evidence showing that specific foods and nutrients may be potential risk or preventive factors. Data on hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) cases were obtained from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) cancer registries. The county-level food environment was assessed using the Modified Retail Food Environment Index (mRFEI), a continuous score that measures the number of healthy and less healthy food retailers within counties. Poisson regression with robust variance estimation was used to calculate incidence rate ratios (IRRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for the association between mRFEI scores and HCC risk, adjusting for individual- and county-level factors. The county-level food environment was not associated with HCC risk after adjustment for individual-level age at diagnosis, sex, race/ethnicity, year, and SEER registry and county-level measures for health conditions, lifestyle factors, and socioeconomic status (adjusted IRR: 0.99, 95% CI: 0.96, 1.01). The county-level food environment, measured using mRFEI scores, was not associated with HCC risk.

scholarly journals Examining the Effects of the Sacramento Dockless E-Bike Share on Bicycling and Driving

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 368
Author(s):  
Dillon T. Fitch ◽  
Hossain Mohiuddin ◽  
Susan L. Handy
Keyword(s):  
Travel Behavior ◽  
Regression Models ◽  
Population Level ◽  
Panel Survey ◽  
Multilevel Regression ◽  
Combine Data ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Bike Share

One way cities are looking to promote bicycling is by providing publicly or privately operated bike-share services, which enable individuals to rent bicycles for one-way trips. Although many studies have examined the use of bike-share services, little is known about how these services influence individual-level travel behavior more generally. In this study, we examine the behavior of users and non-users of a dockless, electric-assisted bike-share service in the Sacramento region of California. This service, operated by Jump until suspended due to the coronavirus pandemic, was one of the largest of its kind in the U.S., and spanned three California cities: Sacramento, West Sacramento, and Davis. We combine data from a repeat cross-sectional before-and-after survey of residents and a longitudinal panel survey of bike-share users with the goal of examining how the service influenced individual-level bicycling and driving. Results from multilevel regression models suggest that the effect of bike-share on average bicycling and driving at the population level is likely small. However, our results indicate that people who have used-bike share are likely to have increased their bicycling because of bike-share.

Against evidence-based oppression: Marginalized youth and the politics of risk-based assessment and intervention

2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Goddard ◽  
Randolph R Myers
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Marginalized Youth ◽  
Youth Justice ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Needs Assessments ◽  
Actuarial Risk ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Causes Of Crime

Actuarial risk/needs assessments exert a formidable influence over the policy and practice of youth offender intervention. Risk-prediction instruments and the programming they inspire are thought not only to link scholarship to practice, but are deemed evidence-based. However, risk-based assessments and programs display a number of troubling characteristics: they reduce the lived experience of racialized inequality into an elevated risk score; they prioritize a very limited set of hyper-individualistic interventions, at the expense of others; and they privilege narrow individual-level outcomes as proof of overall success. As currently practiced, actuarial youth justice replicates earlier interventions that ask young people to navigate structural causes of crime at the individual level, while laundering various racialized inequalities at the root of violence and criminalization. This iteration of actuarial youth justice is not inevitable, and we discuss alternatives to actuarial youth justice as currently practiced.

scholarly journals Association between area-level education and the co-occurrence of behavior-related risk factors: a multilevel analysis

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonio Fernando Boing ◽  
SV Subramanian ◽  
Alexandra Crispim Boing
Keyword(s):  
Risk Factors ◽  
Chronic Diseases ◽  
Educational Level ◽  
Physical Inactivity ◽  
Eating Habits ◽  
Significant Proportion ◽  
Simultaneous Occurrence ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Unhealthy Eating

ABSTRACT: Introduction: This study aimed to investigate the association of four different risk factors for chronic diseases and accumulation of these health behaviors with area-level education, regardless of individual-level characteristics in Brazil. Methods: A population-based cross-sectional study was carried out in Southern Brazil including 1,720 adults in 2009/2010. The simultaneous occurrence of tobacco smoking, abusive drinking, unhealthy eating habits, and physical inactivity was investigated. Using multilevel models, we tested whether area-level education was associated with each risk factor and with the co-occurrence of them after controlling sociodemographic individual-level variables. Results: We observed a between-group variance of 7.79, 7.11, 6.84 and 1.08% for physical inactivity, problematic use of alcohol, unhealthy eating habits, and smoking, respectively. The between-group variance for the combination of four behaviors was 14.2%. Area-level education explained a significant proportion of the variance observed in physical inactivity and unhealthy eating habits. Residents of low educational level neighborhoods showed a 2.40 (95%CI 1.58 - 3.66) times higher chance of unhealthy eating and 1.78 (95%CI 1.19 - 2.67) times higher chance of physical inactivity. The likelihood of individuals with two or three/four risk factors was simultaneously higher among residents of low educational level neighborhoods. Conclusion: Public policies should consider the area-level characteristics, including education to control risk factors for chronic diseases.

The Economic Roots of External Efficacy: Assessing the Relationship between External Political Efficacy and Income Inequality

2015 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 791-813 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mikel Norris
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Income Inequality ◽  
National Level ◽  
State Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Efficacy ◽  
Multilevel Regression ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Negative Effect ◽  
The 1960S

AbstractExternal political efficacy, the belief that government is responsive to the demands of its citizens, has been declining in the United States since the 1960s. However, scholars do not yet fully understand the reasons for its decline. Nor have they found suitable explanations for why it fluctuates within the electorate. Drawing on the growing literature on the effects of income inequality on public policy, I posit that increasing income inequality factors into the decline of external political efficacy. Using multilevel regression models accounting for individual and contextual factors, I find increasing state-level income inequality has a substantial negative effect on external political efficacy. It is greater than most state and national-level economic measures or individual-level variables on external political efficacy. These results have important implications both for research on income inequality and political participation and also for research on income inequality and distributional public policy.

2019 TOKYO DECLARATION

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 83-85
Author(s):  
James Appleyard
Keyword(s):  
Human Resources ◽  
Health System ◽  
Health Professionals ◽  
Ethical Framework ◽  
Life Balance ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Service Environment ◽  
Environment And Health ◽  
Individual Physician ◽  
The Individual

As the Congress explored the nature of burnout among doctors and health professionals in differing settings and in different nations it is clear that burnout is a global phenomenon. An organizational paradigm changes to a person- and people-centered system that incorporates complexity, is adaptive and integrative is essential. Such a change will enable continuing medical education be effective and the current unaffordable and unnecessary waste of human resources that the Congress identified reduced. The Congress reviewed a range of features precipitating burnout including a dysfunctional work–life balance and a variety of relatively simple individually protective factors. It is because of this variety that person- and people-centered initiatives rather than narrowly based top-down management solutions will prove effective Individual-level actions can be taken to reduce stress and poor health symptoms through effective coping and promoting healthy behavior. But there needs to be a much better alignment between the health system and the individual physician so that there are shared professional values within a clear medical ethical framework [23] that encourages professional development and adaptation to the health service environment and health system.

Towards an inclusive research culture in upcoming Health and Education Precincts in New South Wales, Australia: implications for policy and practice

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Madhan Balasubramanian ◽  
Victoria Flood
Keyword(s):  
New South ◽  
New South Wales ◽  
Political Commitment ◽  
Research Culture ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Innovation Ecosystem ◽  
South Wales ◽  
Continued Education ◽  
Innovative Environment ◽  
Future Policy

Abstract An inclusive research culture is vital towards the maturity of Health and Education Precincts into an active innovation ecosystem. To date, substantial investments have been made in 13 upcoming Health and Education Precincts in varying stages of development in the Greater Sydney region, New South Wales. The political commitment to create an innovative environment for teaching and a vibrant research culture is noticeable. However, it is unclear to what extent government policy engages the breadth of clinical personnel in teaching and research-related activities and contributes towards improving research culture. Based on a study conducted at the central river district of the Greater Sydney region, we argue that better engagement of clinical personnel in teaching/research-related activities and inclusion of research-related roles within the job description of clinical personnel can substantially drive a positive research culture and thereby contribute towards the overall development of Health and Education Precincts. Opportunities for continued education and training of clinical personnel and involvement in graduate research programs also substantially drives research culture. We argue that future policy and practice solutions for upcoming Health and Education Precincts need to foster an inclusive research culture and should be tailored to meet the needs of an innovative ecosystem. Future solutions will need to contribute towards improving research culture as well as the health and wellbeing of people in the region.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document