Living Environment Matters: Relationships Between Neighborhood Characteristics and Health of the Residents in a Dutch Municipality

Abstract

Characteristics of an individual alone cannot exhaustively explain all the causes of poor health, and neighborhood of residence have been suggested to be one of the factors that contribute to health. However, knowledge about aspects of the neighborhood that are most important to health is limited. The main objective of this study was to explore associations between certain features of neighborhood environment and self-rated health and depressive symptoms in Maastricht (The Netherlands). A large amount of routinely collected neighborhood data were aggregated by means of factor analysis to 18 characteristics of neighborhood social and physical environment. Associations between these characteristics and self-rated health and presence of depressive symptoms were further explored in multilevel logistic regression models adjusted for individual demographic and socio-economic factors. The study sample consisted of 9,879 residents (mean age 55 years, 48 % male). Residents of unsafe communities were less likely to report good health (OR 0.88 95 % CI 0.80-0.97) and depressive symptoms (OR 0.81 95 % CI 0.69-0.97), and less cohesive environment was related to worse self-rated health (OR 0.81 95 % CI 0.72-0.92). Residents of neighborhoods with more car traffic nuisance and more disturbance from railway noise reported worse mental health (OR 0.79 95 % CI 0.68-0.92 and 0.85 95 % CI 0.73-0.99, respectively). We did not observe any association between health and quality of parking and shopping facilities, facilities for public or private transport, neighborhood aesthetics, green space, industrial nuisance, sewerage, neighbor nuisance or satisfaction with police performance. Our findings can be used to support development of integrated health policies targeting broader determinants of health. Improving safety, social cohesion and decreasing traffic nuisance in disadvantaged neighborhoods might be a promising way to improve the health of residents and reduce health inequalities.

Health benefits of green spaces in the living environment: A systematic review of epidemiological studies

“…One medium-quality found no significant positive association between mental health and the objectively assessed quality of the green areas, but did find a significant positive association between mental health and the quality of streetscape greenery (van Dillen et al, 2011). The other two studies reported that higher satisfaction with green space in the residence area was significantly associated with lower odds of psychological distress (Putrik et al, 2014) or higher odds of not being in the lowest quartile of mental health (Guite et al, 2006).…”

“…The findings of three medium-quality studies consistently showed a positive association between quality of green space and perceived general health (Table 1) (Agyemang et al, 2007;Putrik et al, 2014;van Dillen et al, 2011). Two studies showed that the group of people that was more dissatisfied with the quality of the green spaces in their neighbourhood had respectively 64% (Agyemang et al, 2007) and 6 percent % (Putrik et al, 2014) higher odds of reporting poor perceived general health, compared to the group that was less dissatisfied.…”

“…One study used an audit by trained assessors to obtain an objective measure of green areas and streetscape greenery collecting information on quality indicators such as absence of litter, accessibility and colourfulness (van Dillen et al, 2011). In three studies respondents were asked to rate their satisfaction with the quality (and availability) of green space in the neighbourhood (Agyemang et al, 2007;Guite et al, 2006;Putrik et al, 2014). One study assessed quality by asking respondents to rate two green space quality aspects: useability and retention (Carter & Horwitz, 2014).…”

“…Two studies showed that the group of people that was more dissatisfied with the quality of the green spaces in their neighbourhood had respectively 64% (Agyemang et al, 2007) and 6 percent % (Putrik et al, 2014) higher odds of reporting poor perceived general health, compared to the group that was less dissatisfied. Another study demonstrated that the objective quality of green space as well as that of the streetscape greenery was positively associated with perceived general health (van Dillen et al, 2011).However, because of the lack of a high-quality study, the evidence is still inconclusive.…”

Neighborhood Factors as Predictors of Poor Sleep in the Sueño Ancillary Study of the Hispanic Community Health Study/Study of Latinos

“…2,[4][5][6][7]9 Similarly epidemiological studies have shown that noise exposure is associated with self-reported health, 56 depression, 56,57 cardiovascular disease, [58][59][60][61][62] and mortality. 62,63 These associations often persist after adjustment for classic behavioral and biomedical risk factors, suggesting that other factors may partly explain these associations.…”