Doctoral Dissertation Research: Integrating Space and Place into Children's Perceptions of Environmental Health Hazards.

本博士论文研究项目的总体目标是发展儿童如何感知环境健康危害的地理概况，将环境-疾病途径的信念和现实与空间和情境方法进行比较。健康地理学和环境卫生学揭示的空间过程反复证实了地理学对理解疾病传播的重要性。研究考察了地点如何成为疾病的驱动力，重点是不同程度的接触，从家庭到社区再到更广泛的区域背景。然而，文献尚未充分纳入空间概念，如拓扑和网络，以理解地理如何塑造健康。在这个项目中，定性方法将以关键线人访谈、焦点小组和儿童访谈为特色。定量和空间数据将在加纳阿克拉通过调查、灾害测绘、摄影练习和带GPS标签的社区步行（定位社区中的特定物体）收集。分析将围绕访谈编码、数据探索、映射、方差测试和逻辑回归展开。总体而言，本文对发展中国家城市儿童健康感知的分析将填补儿童健康感知文献的空白，并为空间认知提供一个新的研究领域。本研究将通过开发和应用包括不同空间成分的环境健康危害知识的空间认知框架，推动健康地理学和环境健康文献的发展。对环境健康危害的认识将用于探讨传染病在加纳阿克拉不断增长的儿童人口中传播的空间和背景方面。在健康地理学和环境卫生的更广泛框架内，拟议的空间分析和定性整合将为研究环境和疾病制定一个多管齐下的系统方法。这项研究广泛应用于公共卫生干预和教育，缩小了儿童对健康的空间观念和健康教育方法之间的差距，因此将与卫生部、关注儿童健康的非政府组织和阿克拉人口理事会分享。作为博士论文研究改进奖，该奖项还将提供支持，使有前途的学生建立一个强大的独立研究生涯。

The overall objective of this doctoral dissertation research project is to develop a geographical overview of how children perceive environmental health hazards, comparing beliefs and realities of environment-disease pathways with spatial and contextual methods. Spatial processes uncovered by health geography and environmental health recurrently corroborate the importance of geography for understanding disease transmission. Studies have examined how place is a driving force of disease with a focus on differing levels of exposure, from household to neighborhood to broader regional contexts. However, the literature has yet to sufficiently incorporate notions of space, such as topology and networks, into understanding how geography shapes health. In this project, qualitative methods will feature key informant interviews, focus groups, and interviews with children. Quantitative and spatial data will be collected in Accra, Ghana using surveys, hazard mapping, photographic exercises, and neighborhood walks with GPS tagging (locating specific objects in a neighborhood). Analysis will revolve around interview coding, data exploration, mapping, variance tests, and logistic regression. Overall, this analysis of health perceptions of children in a developing world city will fill a gap in the literature on children's health perception, and provide a novel research domain for spatial cognition. This research will advance the health geography and environmental health literature by developing and applying a spatial cognition framework of environmental health hazard knowledge that includes diverse spatial components. Perceptions of environmental health hazards will be used to explore both spatial and contextual aspects of infectious disease transmission among the growing population of children in Accra, Ghana. Within the broader framework of health geography and environmental health, the proposed spatial analytical and qualitative integration will develop a multi-pronged systems approach for studying environment and disease. The research has broad applications in public health interventions and education by narrowing the gap between children's spatial perceptions of health and health education methods, and therefore will be shared with the Health Ministry, NGOs with interest in children's health, and the Population Council in Accra. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award also will provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career.