Disparities in Exposure to Environmental Threats

 描述（由申请人提供）：我们的格鲁吉亚州立大学公共卫生学院的总体目标是追求这样一个概念，即不利的社会条件，协同作用，恶化群体之间的健康差距，并创造越来越多的人陷入他们的不利条件。"综合征"一词被用来描述这种社会状况。其要素包括个人风险、对各种疾病和状况的易感性、邻里和环境因素以及渗透到弱势群体生活中的大规模社会弊病。这些因素之间复杂的相互作用很难直接研究。相反，我们把重点放在健康差距上，以此作为衡量这些因素综合影响的不良影响的标准。然而，健康方面的差距也带来了一个有趣的问题。从大规模上看，它们是显而易见的，至少在短期内似乎是不可改变的。在小范围内，由于侧重于可界定的领域或可界定的人口，往往由于缺乏少量数据，可能无法认识到差异。因此，我们的总体目标，定义syndrome的相互作用已被绑定到显示在特定群体或地区的可操作的健康差距的主题。我们提出的两个试点项目建立在贯穿我们卓越中心的三条主线上。首先，健康不平等的一个重要根源来自弱势群体所处的建筑环境和环境侮辱。第二，这些环境问题需要与社会决定因素和个人风险交织在一起，以便了解其影响。第三，在我们的COE中，开发更有效的城市指标的主要努力可以同时用于检查一系列风险和决定因素。这些项目集中在两个重要的环境风险-氡和过热。每一个方案都使用现有的监测数据，并提议试点收集其他环境数据。每一项研究都将使用我们开发的城市健康指数，结合社会决定因素和健康结果的现有数据分析数据来源。每一个项目都将提供试点结果，我们认为这些结果将支持制定更有效的城市政策，以减少这些风险。这些拟议项目的目标是进行试点研究，以显示对环境威胁敏感性的差异。我们的目标是表明，公认的环境风险没有得到充分的探讨，其对弱势群体的影响。其影响不仅是提高对低社会经济地位地区此类风险的认识，而且为决策者制定补救计划提供了坚实的证据。

 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The overall goal of our Georgia State University School of Public Health Center of Excellence has been to pursue the concept that adverse social conditions, acting synergistically, worsen the health disparities between groups, and create increasing entrapment of people in their disadvantaged condition. The term "syndemics" has been used to describe such a social condition. Its elements involve personal risks, susceptibility to a variety of diseases and conditions, neighborhood and environmental factors, and large-scale social ills that permeate the lives of disadvantaged persons. The complex interaction of these factors is difficult to study directly. Rather, we have focused on health disparities as the metric for demonstrating the ill effects of the combined influence of these factors. Health disparities pose an interesting problem, however. On a large scale, they are obvious and, at least in the short term, seemingly immutable. On a small scale, with a focus on definable areas or on definable populations, disparities may not be appreciated, often for lack of small data. Thus, our overall goal of defining syndemic interactions has been tied to the theme of demonstrating actionable health disparities in specific groups or areas. The two pilot projects that we propose build on three threads that run through our Center of Excellence. First, an important source of health inequality arises from the built environment and environmental insults to which disadvantaged populations are subject. Second, these environmental issues need to be interwoven with social determinants and personal risks in order to understand their impact. Third, a major effort within our COE to develop more effective urban metrics can be brought to bear for examining a range of risks and determinants simultaneously. These projects focus on two important environmental risks-radon and excessive heat. Each uses existing monitoring data and proposes pilot gathering of other environmental data. Each will analyze the data sources in conjunction with existing data on social determinants and health outcomes using an Urban Health Index that we have developed. Each will provide pilot results that we believe will support the development of more effective urban policy for abatement of these risks. The goal of these proposed projects is to conduct pilot studies that will demonstrate disparities in susceptibility to environmental threats. Our objective is to show that well recognized environmental risks have not been sufficiently explored for their impact on vulnerable populations. The impact will be not only to raise awareness of such risks in low SES areas, but to provide solid evidence to decision makers for constructing remediation plans.