Residential Greenness and Birthweight in the State of Massachusetts, USA

Fong, Kelvin C.; Kloog, Itai; Coull, Brent A.; Koutrakis, Petros; Laden, Francine; Schwartz, Joel; James, Peter

doi:10.3390/ijerph15061248

Cited by 46 publications

(44 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…211 A study by the same team in Texas found that for all urban areas in Texas, there was a small increase in term birthweights across quartiles of NDVI (compared with the lowest). 235 As with the studies by Fong et al 236 and Agay-Shay et al 233 , this study found that comparing the 2 nd and 3 rd quartiles of exposure to the lowest quantile has a stronger effect than comparing the 4 th . When stratifying by four major cities, quite different results per city were seen.…”

supporting

confidence: 77%

“…Some of the papers in this review point to a nonlinear response to green space, with the highest values not necessarily those that predict the best gains in birthweight. 233,236 These papers indicate that a proportion of green space in the zone of 25-75% may have the strongest influence on birthweight. I was not able to find studies to support or refute this finding across the health literature, and thus suggest that future studies consider whether there is a threshold level for the benefits of green space and test whether green space acts in a linear fashion.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…29,210,211,[223][224][225][226][227][228][229][230][231][232] The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer on the Terra satellite (MODIS) was used in four studies. [233][234][235][236] Lastly, NDVI from RapidEye was used in one study. 233 Percentage of tree cover is a canopy cover measure, typically measuring trees and shrub with a height of greater than 2 metres.…”

Section: Summary Of Included Papersmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The majority of the included studies (n=15) used geo-coded maternal residential address to measure green space exposures 28,29,211,[224][225][226][227][228]230,231,[233][234][235][236][237] , while area level geography (such as postcode or suburb) was used in five studies 210,222,229,232,238 The remaining study used the centre point of the street on which the mother resided. 223 For NDVI measures, buffers were set around either the exact residential address or a polygon representing the area the mother resided in for all included studies.…”

Section: Summary Of Included Papersmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A positive association within 250m was also seen in a US study, which found a non-linear trend for green space and birthweight. 236 They found NDVI values below the 25 th and above the 75 th percentile were non-significant. The strongest association was between 25% and 50% which gave a small but significant increase of birthweight per 0.1% increase of NDVI (6.69g, 95% CI: Some studies have found significant effects only at a larger buffer size.…”

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confidence: 96%

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Novel green space measures and birthweight in Queensland, Australia

Vilcins¹

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IntroductionEnvironmental exposures can contribute both benefits and risks to human health. Green space represents an environmental exposure that may confer benefits to human health. There are several proposed benefits to green space exposure, such as improving mental wellbeing, increasing physical activity, improving the social cohesion of local neighbourhoods, reducing the negative effect of environmental risk factors, and improving exposure to beneficial microbiota. One of the proposed health benefits is an improvement in the health outcomes of neonates. Maternal exposure to green space has been associated with improvements in birthweight, among other birth outcomes. The developmental origins of health and disease hypothesis suggests that investing in healthy foetal development in Utero confers benefits across the life span. This makes an assessment of the potential impacts of environmental exposures on foetal development an important undertaking in population health. The current body of evidence on birthweight and maternal green space exposure is limited to a handful of exposure measures and coarse allocation of exposure. Newer measures of green space have been developed, which allows for an exploration of the effect of different ground covers (green, dry and bare earth), as well as measures of biodiversity, on health. This thesis explores the association of these novel green space measures with birthweight in a large birth cohort in Queensland, Australia. ObjectivesThis study has several objectives: 1) to examine the maternal and socio-demographic characteristics associated with birthweight; 2) to test for an association between green space, dry cover and bare earth and birthweight outcomes, controlling for the maternal and social factors; 3) to test whether foliage projective cover, a measure of crown canopy shading, is associated with birthweight outcomes; 4) to explore whether effects of green space differ between rural and urban communities; 5) to explore the interaction of green space with other environmental variables, namely air pollution and ambient temperature; and 6) to explore whether biodiversity is associated with birthweight outcomes. MethodsSeveral data sets were acquired and merged to create the data set used in this study. The outcome was birthweight (in grams and age-standardised), and this was acquired along with maternal covariates from the routine health records available for all births in Queensland, Australia. Social and neighbourhood variables were acquired from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The exposures of interest to this study were green space (fractional cover, biodiversity and foliage projective iii cover), ambient temperature and air pollution. Directed acyclic graphs were developed to guide variable selection in all analyses. Mixed-effects linear regression and generalised linear mixedeffects models were developed, with random intercepts for maternal residential locality and year of birth. Results are presented as standardised beta coefficients or odds ratios, with 95% ...

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supporting

confidence: 77%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Summary Of Included Papersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Summary Of Included Papersmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 96%

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Novel green space measures and birthweight in Queensland, Australia

Vilcins¹

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Methods in Public Health Environmental Justice Research: a Scoping Review from 2018 to 2021

Casey,

Daouda,

Babadi

et al. 2023

Curr Envir Health Rpt

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Purpose of Review The volume of public health environmental justice (EJ) research produced by academic institutions increased through 2022. However, the methods used for evaluating EJ in exposure science and epidemiologic studies have not been catalogued. Here, we completed a scoping review of EJ studies published in 19 environmental science and epidemiologic journals from 2018 to 2021 to summarize research types, frameworks, and methods. Recent Findings We identified 402 articles that included populations with health disparities as a part of EJ research question and met other inclusion criteria. Most studies (60%) evaluated EJ questions related to socioeconomic status (SES) or race/ethnicity. EJ studies took place in 69 countries, led by the US (n = 246 [61%]). Only 50% of studies explicitly described a theoretical EJ framework in the background, methods, or discussion and just 10% explicitly stated a framework in all three sections. Among exposure studies, the most common area-level exposure was air pollution (40%), whereas chemicals predominated personal exposure studies (35%). Overall, the most common method used for exposure-only EJ analyses was main effect regression modeling (50%); for epidemiologic studies the most common method was effect modification (58%), where an analysis evaluated a health disparity variable as an effect modifier. Summary Based on the results of this scoping review, current methods in public health EJ studies could be bolstered by integrating expertise from other fields (e.g., sociology), conducting community-based participatory research and intervention studies, and using more rigorous, theory-based, and solution-oriented statistical research methods.

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An apple a day: How trees improve human health

Kemper

2019

Complementary Therapies in Medicine

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Residential Greenness and Birthweight in the State of Massachusetts, USA

Cited by 46 publications

References 42 publications

Novel green space measures and birthweight in Queensland, Australia

Novel green space measures and birthweight in Queensland, Australia

Methods in Public Health Environmental Justice Research: a Scoping Review from 2018 to 2021

An apple a day: How trees improve human health

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