David C. Sloane

Improving the nutritional resource environment for healthy living through community-based participatory research.

OBJECTIVES: To build health promotion capacity among community residents through a community-based participatory model, and to apply this model to study the nutritional environment of an urban area to better understand the role of such resources in residents’ efforts to live a healthy life.DESIGN: A multiphase collaborative study that inventoried selected markets in targeted areas of high African-American concentration in comparison with markets in a contrasting wealthier area with fewer African Americans.SETTING: A community study set in the Los Angeles metropolitan area.PARTICIPANTS: African-American community organizations and community residents in the target areas.INTERVENTIONS: Two surveys of market inventories were conducted. The first was a single-sheet form profiling store conditions and the availability of a small selection of healthy foods. The second provided detailed information on whether the store offered fruit, vegetables, low-fat dairy products, dried goods and other items necessary for residents to consume a nutritious diet.RESULTS: The targeted areas were significantly less likely to have important items for living a healthier life. The variety and quality of fresh fruit and vegetable produce was significantly lower in the target areas. Such products as 1% milk, skim milk, low-fat and nonfat cheese, soy milk, tofu, whole grain pasta and breads, and low-fat meat and poultry items were significantly less available.CONCLUSIONS: Healthy food products were significantly less available in the target areas. The authors conclude from these results that the health disparities experienced by African-American communities have origins that extend beyond the health delivery system and individual behaviors inasmuch as adherence to the healthy lifestyle associated with low chronic disease risk is more difficult in resource-poor neighborhoods than in resource-rich ones.

The last great necessity : cemeteries in American history

Traces the history of American cemeteries from colonial times to the present day. This study looks at how small family or church graveyards were transformed into large, commercially operated lawn-park cemeteries.

Putting Promotion Into Practice: The African Americans Building a Legacy of Health Organizational Wellness Program

A Los Angeles REACH demonstration project led by Community Health Councils, Inc. adapted and implemented an organizational wellness intervention originally developed by the local health department, providing training in incorporating physical activity and healthy food choices into the routine “conduct of business” in 35 predominantly public and private, nonprofit-sector agencies. A total of 700 staff, members, or clients completed the 12-week or subsequently retooled 6-week curriculum. Attendance and retention rates between baseline and postintervention assessments were improved substantially in the shortened offering. Feelings of sadness or depression decreased significantly (p = .00), fruit and vegetable intake increased significantly (+0.5 servings/day, p = .00), and body mass index decreased marginally (-0.5 kg/m2, p = .08) among 12-week participants. The numbers of days in which individuals participated in vigorous physical activity increased significantly among 6-week participants (+0.3, p = .00). This model holds promise for extending the reach of environmentally focused work-site wellness programming to organizations and at-risk populations not traditionally engaged by such efforts.

The prospects and problems of integrating sketch maps with geographic information systems to understand environmental perception: a case study of mapping youth fear in Los Angeles gang neighborhoods

How people feel about places matters, especially in their neighborhood. It matters for their health, the health of their children, and their social cohesion and use of local resources. A growing body of research in public health, planning, psychology, and sociology bears out this point. Recently, a new methodological tack has been taken to find out how people feel about places. The sketch map, a once popular tool of behavioral geographers and environmental psychologists to understand how people perceive the structural aspects of places, is now being used in concert with geographic information systems (GIS) to capture and spatially analyze the emotional side of urban environmental perception. This confluence is generating exciting prospects for what we can learn about the characteristics of the urban environment that elicit emotion. However, due to the uncritical way this approach has been employed to date, excitement about the prospects must be tempered by the acknowledgement of its potential problems. In this paper we review the extant research on integrating sketch maps with GIS and then employ a case study of mapping youth fear in Los Angeles gang neighborhoods to demonstrate these prospects and the problems, particularly in the areas of (1) representation of environmental perception in GIS and (2) spatial analysis of these data.

Trust in a Cross-Sectoral Interorganizational Network: An Empirical Investigation of Antecedents

This study explores the antecedents to trust among the participants in a cross-sectoral interorganizational network. We offer hypotheses for nine potential antecedents of trust divided into three categories: attributes of the trustor, of the trustee, and of their relationship. We analyzed dyadic data collected from a network of community-based organizations collaborating to promote change in a south Los Angeles community. The results of our analysis reveal that trust building is not a simple process but results from a combination of attributes of trustors, trustees, and their relationships. Trustors’ general tendency to trust other participants in the network, trustees’ reputation in the network, whether a trustee is from the same sector as the trustor, whether a trustee is important to the trustor, and the multiplexity of interactions between a trustor and trustee significantly influenced the level of trust. Some suggestions for developing trust among participants in such networks are offered.

Improving civil gang injunctions: how implementation can affect gang dynamics, crime, and violence

Civil gang injunctions (CGIs) are an increasingly popular street gang control technique. Although admired by criminal justice officials, we know relatively little about how differing implementation approaches might affect their efficacy. In this study, we interviewed youth in contrasting neighborhoods—some under a CGI and others not—to observe the ways gang injunctions may strengthen or weaken the gang as a group. We conclude that improved knowledge of social psychological processes will help policy makers more effectively craft gang injunctions to achieve sustained neighborhood change. Street gangs play a major role in the socialization of youth, the social and organizational context of neighborhoods, and the level of crime and fear of crime in many communities. In 2008, close to 774,000 gang members belonging to 27,900 gangs were reported

Transforming the urban food desert from the grassroots up: a model for community change.

Confronted by continuing health disparities in vulnerable communities, Community Health Councils (CHC), a nonprofit community-based organization in South Los Angeles, worked with the African Americans Building a Legacy of Health Coalition and research partners to develop a community change model to address the root causes of health disparities within the communitys African American population. This article discusses how the CHC Models development and application led to public policy interventions in a “food desert.” The CHC Model provided a systematic approach to engaging impacted communities in support of societal level reforms, with the goal to influence health outcomes.

The Prevalence of Harmful Content on Outdoor Advertising in Los Angeles: Land Use, Community Characteristics, and the Spatial Inequality of a Public Health Nuisance

OBJECTIVES Our study sought to examine associations between the content of outdoor advertising and neighborhood ethnic/racial and socioeconomic composition to see whether particular communities disproportionately host harmful content. METHODS We constructed a spatial database of photographs taken from June 2012 until December 2012 in 7 identically zoned communities in Los Angeles, California, to compare outdoor advertising area and content. We selected communities to contrast by ethnicity/race, income, education, and youth population. RESULTS At-risk communities and communities of color hosted more outdoor advertising depicting harmful content than other communities. Among included neighborhoods, harmful content and the proportion of outdoor advertising overall were most prevalent in communities of Asian Americans and Latino Americans. In all communities, harmful content represented at least 24% of outdoor advertising space. CONCLUSIONS This study provides evidence of the potential for land-use decisions to result in spatially inequitable health impacts. Although dictating the placement of outdoor advertising through zoning may seem sensible, such a decision might have the unintended consequence of disadvantaging the well-being of local communities. Neighborhood factors require more contextually nuanced public health and land-use policy.

Developing networks for community change: exploring the utility of network analysis

This article demonstrates how network analysis can be used to develop a better understanding of a community-based network and steps that might be taken to facilitate network development. The focal network in this study was organized by a local non-profit organization as part of their effort to effect community-level change. The activities of this network were guided by three steering committees, 23 members of which provided data regarding numerous aspects of their relationships with a set of 39 organizations. We first provide descriptive information regarding patterns of relationships among network participants at both the committee and whole-network level. We then summarize results of hierarchical linear modeling and analysis of variance analyses that clarify how data generated through network analysis can be incorporated into these traditional analytic procedures to yield additional insights regarding network properties. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of these findings for the continued development of this community-based network, as well as implications for others interested in using network analysis to facilitate change in their own communities.

Overview of: “Improving Civil Gang Injunctions: How Implementation Can Affect Gang Dynamics, Crime, and Violence”

Research Summary The civil gang injunction (CGI) is an increasingly popular suppression strategy. Interviews with 416 youth in areas with and without a CGI suggest that suppression-oriented injunctions may have little useful impact on gang social dynamics. CGIs may have promise as part of a comprehensive strategy that uses enhanced sanctions both to suppress crime and to move individual gang offenders toward alternatives (such as education, personal development, and jobs), allowing them to imagine alternative social identities. Policy Implications Whether CGIs play a positive role in curtailing the activities of street gang members or whether they fuel it instead may depend on policy makers and criminal justice officials ensuring that (a) gang members are approached as individuals, (b) the safety zone is appropriately sized, and (c) police suppression activities are accompanied by gang-focused social services and a clear, transparent escape clause. Successful implementation depends on multiple city agencies being integrated into the CGI strategy early on.