 |
How does a person's local environment influence their health? Diseases can be clustered spatially, as can the environmental and socio-economic factors that can influence some chronic diseases. With colleagues from UCSF and Kaiser Permanente we have begun a collaborative initiative to establish a comprehensive contextual database for use by Kaiser Permanente Division of Research, UCSF, and UCB investigators. We will compile identified environmental, geographical, socio-economic, administrative, and contextual data in order to permit sophisticated spatial and multilevel analysis of neighborhood-level effects on health behaviors and outcomes. The UCSF Center for Health & Community will oversee this effort, led by Dr. Barbara Laraia, and I will carry out the creation of the contextual database. |
