Neighborhoods and Health

THE GROUNDBREAKING, FORMATIVE WORK IN SPATIAL EPIDEMIOLOGY -- NOW UPDATED FOR A NEW GENERATION OF RESEARCH AND PRACTICE IN PUBLIC HEALTH

In 2003, Neighborhoods and Health codified the idea that a neighborhood's social and physical makeup can influence the health of people who live in it.

More than a decade later, with the relationship between place and health firmly entrenched at the center of how we understand public health (and as its own scientific discipline, spatial epidemiology), this second edition of the landmark text offers another giant leap forward for the field.

Offering both a synthesis of the essential research and a practical overview of the methods used to garner it, the second edition of Neighborhoods and Health is the essential guide to understanding this core component of contemporary population health -- both the journey to date and what's next.

Dustin T. Duncan, ScD, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Population Health at the New York University School of Medicine, where he directs the NYU Spatial Epidemiology Lab. As a social and spatial epidemiologist, he studies how specific neighborhood characteristics influence population health and health disparities. His work includes applying emerging geospatial technologies such as Global Positioning System (GPS) devices and smart phones to, in part, examine mobility and social networks in neighborhoods. Dr. Duncan completed his doctorate and the Alonzo Smythe Yerby Postdoctoral Fellowship, both in social epidemiology, at the Harvard University T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Ichiro Kawachi, MD, PhD, is the John L. Loeb and Frances Lehman Loeb Professor of Social Epidemiology and Chair of the Department of Social & Behavioral Sciences at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, where he has taught since 1992. He has previously co-edited Behavioral Economics and Public Health, Social Epidemiology, Globalization and Health, and the Oxford Handbook of Public Health Practice, all published by Oxford University Press. Kawachi lectures about social epidemiology through the Harvard University Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) platform, edX. His course, "Health and Society" (PHx 201), is a version of the class that he has taught for twenty years at Harvard. In 2013-1014, 35,000 students from all over the world were enrolled in the MOOC course.