Tag: social determinants of health

Author Q&A: “Association between State Minimum Wages and Suicide Rates in the U.S.”

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Alex Gertner, BA
Alex Gertner,  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

As the suicide rate increases across the United States, researchers at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health approached the issue by considering the financial anxiety caused by low wages. Alex Gertner, Jason Rotter, and Paul Shafer used the LawAtlas minimum wage dataset to explore the associations between state minimum wages and suicide rates in the United States.

Their study was published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine on March 21, 2019.

Temple University Center for Public Health Law Research spoke with Mr. Gertner about their study.

 

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Heatmap of the the U.S. from the Opportunity Atlas website

Opportunity Atlas Creates Opportunities for Legal Epidemiology

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By Amy Cook

Public health experts know that the social determinants of health—the environments in which we live, work, learn, and play—all have important effects on our health and well-being. As further evidence of this, in October 2018, researchers from Opportunity Insights collaborated with the Census Bureau to unveil the Opportunity Atlas, an interactive tool tracking data from more than 20 million Americans from childhood through their mid-30s, across each of the country’s 70,000 census tracts. The Opportunity Atlas gives us crucial insight into the level of geography that can impact adult outcomes: beyond the state and city, the neighborhood matters, sometimes tremendously. Read More

Housing Equity Week in Review

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Lots of questions and debate this week in housing equity and law. Here’s the latest for the week of February 21-27, 2017:

  • After a win for the Civil Gideon movement in New York, Next City asks if other cities could follow New York City’s lead and extend the right to counsel to low income tenants facing eviction?
  • There is a known racial wealth gap in the United States. Many attribute the wealth gap to the legacy of housing policies, such as redlining, that did not allow property of people of color to appreciate in the same manner as property of white Americans. Does that mean that today the solution to the wealth gap is in housing? Not necessarily argues Dorothy Brown of Emory University, via Forbes.
  • Diane Yentel, National Low Income Housing Coalition President and CEO, reflects on Mortgage Interest Deduction reform.
  • Bozeman, Montana cites city building and development code as a barrier to housing affordability. The debate on the effects of code continues politically, but is there evidence to back it up?
  • What does a Trump administration and large business tax cuts mean for affordable housing? Developers in California are concerned in the face of uncertainty as the Low Income Housing Tax Credit program might become less attractive to banks and investors, via the LA Times.
  • While the research community still debates the extent to which gentrification leads to displacement, a new study in Journal of Urban Health assess the health outcomes of those who stay. Analysis via CityLab, paper here.

Health Equity in Housing Book Club: “Knocking on the Door”

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Q&A with Christopher Bonastia, PhD

This is the first in a series of posts we will share during our research for our housing equity project. Have a suggestion for what we should read next? Let us know.

In his 2006 book, Knocking on the Door: The Federal Government’s Attempt to Desegregate the Suburbs, Christopher Bonastia, PhD, reviews the federal government’s role in perpetuating residential segregation in the United States, and its fleeting attempts to desegregate the nation’s neighborhoods.

Dr. Bonastia discusses the active role federal agencies and courts have played in creating and perpetuating residential segregation. He points to the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, the Federal Housing Administration, the Veterans Administration, and the US Department of Housing and Urban Development as significant players in segregation and desegregation.

Understanding the roots of segregation and policy attempts to desegregate is key to understanding housing as a social determinant of health. Empirical research has shown associations between black-white segregation and an increased black infant mortality rate, elevated rates of black mortality, black homicide rates, and other negative individual and public health outcomes. Addressing racial residential segregation is imperative when attempting to improve any of those health outcomes.

Christopher Bonastia is professor of sociology at Lehman College and the City University of New York Graduate Center, as well as associate director of the Lehman Scholars Program and Macaulay Honors College at Lehman. He is the author of Southern Stalemate: Five Years without Public Education in Prince Edward County, Virginia as well as Knocking on the Door: The Federal Government’s Attempt to Desegregate the Suburbs.

Our team read Knocking on the Door during our initial research period on housing, health equity and legal levers. Continue reading below for our interview with Dr. Bonastia about this book and ongoing research in this area.

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