Understanding the contributions of the neighborhood social environment to cardiovascular disease risk factors in a multi-ethnic cohort of Chicago women

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ABSTRACT While several advances have been made in the assessment of the impact of the neighborhood built environment (i.e., physical attributes like grocery stores or parks) on cardiometabolic disease risk, fewer gains have been made in understanding the contributions of the neighborhood social environment (i.e., socioeconomic composition, crime, and collective efficacy). Most prior neighborhood research on the social environment has utilized U.S. Census indicators, to characterize neighborhood features.14 Although these measures can sufficiently capture the role of neighborhood-level socioeconomic disadvantage and racial/ethnic residential segregation, they are more limited in their ability to assess the influence of other aspects of the social environment related to crime and collective efficacy like economic disinvestment and physical disorder. This is especially problematic at a time when public health practitioners are being called on to identify salient targets for more collaborative, cross-sector approaches to addressing social determinants of health. In recognition of this gap in the field, the objective of this application is to use more novel, widely available data sources to investigate the contributions of under-studied aspects of the social environment to cardiometabolic disease risk in a sample of women ages 18-44 living in the city of Chicago. We will achieve this objective in part by taking advantage of Google's “Street View” feature, which makes it possible to assess these features virtually by viewing high resolution images of neighborhoods of interest and taking a virtual “walk” through the neighborhood.17-19 We will also use a combination of business location databases, housing stock and affordability data, and American Community Survey data. The successful execution of these aims will meaningfully improve the field by testing the influence of multiple objective, cost-effective, and scalable measures of the social environment on cardiometabolic disease risk.