Neighborhood research from a spatially oriented strengths perspective

Abstract

Ⅲ Research investigating neighborhood effects on children and families has been largely deficit and individual-focusedThis article is dedicated to the memory of Carol T. Mowbray. Four months after being diagnosed with advanced gall bladder cancer, Carol died on August 23, 2005, at the much too young age of 57. Carol was the organizing force in bringing the authors on this article together to explore the potential applications of spatial and multilevel methods to studying complex community-level social processes. Her unwavering strengths perspective, which she not just believed but lived, toward research, practice, colleagues, and students, is reflected in the theoretical orientation of this article. The "GIS Group" she started has carried on after her death and is currently engaged in empirical analyses inspired by this first conceptual article. In so many ways, this article is an example of the kind of contributions Carol made to the fields of psychology and social work during the course of her career. Carol was most impressive at bringing many people to the table and finding the strengths and potential contributions of each. Carol has been a deeply valued mentor to many developing researchers over the years. She is profoundly missed by the assistant professors and doctoral students here at the University of Michigan, who were currently being mentored by her, some of whom are authors of this article.

Neighborhood Characteristics, Child Maltreatment, and Child Injuries

“…As noted, there are enormous challenges in research on neighborhood effects on children's safety, including methodologies to account for contextual complexity, differences in the definition of neighborhood, and vagaries in the quality of data on significant social issues, including child maltreatment data, among others (Auspos and Kubish 2004;Coulton 2005;McDonell 2006McDonell , 2007Mowbray et al 2007;Sutherland et al 2001). The advent of spatial technologies, data integration in hierarchical databases over large geographies, and the increasing number of researchers willing to jump into the fray have led to improvements, although there is still room for growth.…”

Catchments of general practice in different countries– a literature review

“…Of these, fifteen [33,36-38,41-51] had a specific focus on primary health and the neighbourhood as the unit of size. Within the fifteen articles, the themes included inequality, ethnicity and cultural diversity, socio-economic factors, rural health, the built environment, the role of spatial and aspatial (social) factors and even local traffic conditions.…”

Neighborhood-level risk and resilience factors: an emerging issue in childhood asthma epidemiology

“…A second major concern is how to measure a construct such as neighborhood. A challenging issue in defining 'resilient' communities is that neighborhoods change over time, often improving when the economy is robust and worsening with economic decline [20]. Thus, the type of positive community-level resources (e.g., social capital, institutional and economic resources) that may be associated with low asthma prevalence are not well understood.…”

“…Thus, the type of positive community-level resources (e.g., social capital, institutional and economic resources) that may be associated with low asthma prevalence are not well understood. A third challenging issue is that people have ties to many different neighborhoods, often living in one community, but commuting to another community for work or leisure activities [20]. Whether the measurement of neighborhood risk and resilience factors should be defined in relation to the primary place where a person lives or in relation to multiple geographic settings is only beginning to be studied.…”

“…These are briefly discussed below and the reader is referred to more extensive reviews for further detail [10,16,20]. First, pediatric asthma is the result of a complex interplay of genetic, sociodemographic and environmental factors.…”