Exploring neighbourhood effects, genetic characteristics and individual behaviours' influence on health disparities within a geographical context...

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... based on social media data mining and individual level survey data. Rapidly increasing prevalence of chronic diseases, such as obesity and diabetes has become a major worldwide challenge and threat requiring more attention and potential interventions. The health status of humans is inevitably affected by the living environment, including the built, social, economic and political environments, their individual characteristics and behaviours, and genetic variations. This research mainly focuses on geographical variations of health disparities and how geographical context plays the significant role in interactions between environments, genomic and individual behaviours, comprehensively understanding the underlying mechanisms of health inequality and investigating risk factors of chronic diseases. Individual level survey data will be utilized to explore, identify and classify the neighbourhood effect and genetic influence on health status based on different exploratory statistical and regression models. Additionally, widespread usage of the Internet provides an opportunity to share daily life, as well as an opportunity to observe health-related behaviours, such as healthy food consumption, physical activity, smoking, alcohol consumption, and poor sleep patterns (Pachucki, et al., 2011; Keating, et al., 2011; Rosenquist, et al., 2010; Mednick, et al., 2010). More health-behaviour patterns can be observed through social media data mining among the wider population, providing an opportunity to investigate the association between socio-cultural factors and health outcomes; also to identity the neighbourhood effect and risk factors of chronic diseases across space based on the combination of survey data and health-related behaviours, such as diet habits and physical activities derived from social media platforms. The analytical results will provide insight on how neighbourhood effect, genetic characteristics and individual behaviour have effects on health status, encouraging governments to raise the awareness of different types of risk factors and improve the living environment aiming at addressing high risks of chronic diseases.