Using a Complex Systems Approach to Understanding Population Mental Health.

人们越来越一致地认为，影响健康和幸福的不仅仅是个人的特征和行为，还有我们生活的社区类型，以及它们为我们提供的机会。这一共识反映在已发表的不同地区之间人们生活机会不平等的证据上，旱地评论《公平社会健康生活》通过关联表明，贫困程度较高的社区往往也有预期寿命较低的人口。社区影响的总体证据有点有限，直到最近才开始有研究表明社区与健康之间存在明确的联系。所研究的健康结果和行为特别关注饮食和体力活动，这与一系列社区背景因素有关，包括绿地、购买新鲜水果和蔬菜的地方(或相反的快餐)，以及建筑环境的“可步行”。心理健康和幸福感受到的关注明显较少，尽管一些高质量的研究着眼于社区绿地和幸福感之间的关系。新出现的流行病学证据得益于研究人员跨学科工作，特别是与地理学家合作，以产生强有力的研究设计。然而，由于假设正在发生的社会生态过程的复杂性，我们不断变化的邻里关系和我们不断变化的健康之间存在因果联系的证据相对较少。这项研究项目旨在通过应用“系统思维”来为邻里效应的实证证据做出重大贡献。这意味着将社区视为复杂、动态的多因素过程，现有研究将其视为简单、静止、深度有限的快照。城市信息学方面的专门培训将极大地增强我在地理信息科学和社会流行病学方面的现有专业知识，并给我所需的工具来操作动态的、而不是静态的社区表示。捕捉社区如何随着时间的推移而变化，以及个人如何随着时间的推移而变化，是找出因果关系的基础。特别是，这项研究将重点关注搬家、预期搬家或更愿意搬家的人在邻里尺度和个人尺度上对心理健康和幸福感的影响。我们知道，社区是不平等的，但在人口流动方面--迁入或迁出社区的人--我们倾向于平等对待他们。研究表明，未能解释这种动态的邻里关系过程--居住人口的流动--可能会影响我们对人们健康的预期，这被称为“选择效应”。这些社区构成因素将与社区的背景因素一起研究，特别是社区犯罪和混乱以及社区经济不安全，以解释社区社会和环境变化如何影响心理健康和福祉。由于一系列补充因素，这类研究才刚刚成为可能。首先，纽约大学城市科学与进步中心(NYU CUSP)的世界级培训。其次，英国丰富的纵向《理解社会》调查数据的可得性。第三，开放和免费的政府行政数据的激增，最后，研究委员会在促进大数据和信息学方法方面越来越多的支持。这一奖学金利用了所有这些因素，希望产生关于社区和健康的世界领先的研究。

There is a growing consensus that it is not just individual characteristics and behaviours that influence health and wellbeing, but the types of neighbourhoods we live in, and the opportunities they afford us. This consensus is reflected by published evidence of inequalities in people's life chances between different places, the Marmot review "Fair Society Healthy Lives" demonstrates by association that neighbourhoods that are more deprived also tend to have populations with lower life expectancies.The overall evidence for neighbourhood effects is somewhat limited, only recently has research begun to demonstrate an unambiguous association between neighbourhood and health. Health outcomes and behaviours studied have particularly focused on diet and physical activity, which have been linked to a range of neighbourhood contextual factors including access to green space, places to buy fresh fruit and vegetables (or conversely fast-food), and the 'walkability' of the built environment. Mental health and wellbeing has received markedly less focus, although some high quality studies have looked at the relationship between neighbourhood green space and wellbeing. Emerging epidemiological evidence has benefitted from researchers working across disciplines, particularly with geographers, in order to produce robust study designs. Nonetheless, evidence of a causal link between our changing neighbourhoods, and our changing health is rather less forthcoming, owing to the complexity of the social-ecological processes hypothesised to be taking place.This research project aims to make a significant contribution to empirical evidence for neighbourhood effects by applying 'systems thinking.' This means treating neighbourhoods as complex, dynamic multi-factorial processes, where existing research treats them as simple, stationary snapshots with limited depth. Specific training in 'Urban Informatics' will greatly augment my existing expertise in Geographic Information Science and Social Epidemiology, and give me the tools required to operationalise dynamic, rather than static, representations of neighbourhoods. Capturing how neighbourhoods change over time alongside how individuals change over time is fundamental to unpicking causality.In particular, the research will focus on the effects on mental health and wellbeing of people moving, expecting to move, or preferring to move, at both the neighbourhood scale, and the individual scale. We know that neighbourhoods are not equal, and yet in terms of population movement - people moving into or out of a neighbourhood - we tend to treat them equally. Studies have suggested that failing to account for this dynamic neighbourhood process - the residential movement of people - can have implications on our expectations for people's health through what are termed 'selection effects'. These neighbourhood compositional factors will be studied alongside contextual aspects of neighbourhoods, notably neighbourhood crime and disorder and neighbourhood economic insecurity, in order to explain how mental health and wellbeing is affected by neighbourhood social and environmental changes.This type of research is only just becoming possible, due to a range of complementary factors. Firstly, world-class training at New York University's Centre for Urban Science and Progress (NYU CUSP). Secondly, the availability of the UK's rich longitudinal "Understanding Society" survey data. Thirdly, the proliferation of open, and free government administrative data, and finally, the growing support from research councils in promoting 'Big Data' and informatics approaches. This fellowship takes advantage of all of these factors, with the hope of producing world-leading research on neighbourhoods and health.