Category Archives: Methods

Registry Data in Injury Research: Study Designs and Interpretation

We recently published a paper in Current Epidemiology Reports on the use of registry data in injury epidemiology. Injury data are frequently captured in registries that form a census of 100% of known cases that meet specified inclusion criteria. We … Continue reading

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Machine Learning Approaches for Measuring Neighborhood Environments in Epidemiologic Studies

We recently published a review article in Current Epidemiology Reports describing the use of machine learning to measure neighborhood environments in epidemiologic studies. Innovations in information technology, initiatives by local governments to share administrative data, and growing inventories of data … Continue reading

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Maintaining patient privacy while geocoding patient addresses: Do Not Use R to Geocode

Imagine if a clinical researcher were to disclose a list of patient addresses to a third-party – government agency, for profit company or not-for-profit entity – that was outside of their hospital or health system. Imagine the researcher then publicly … Continue reading

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Improving the measurement of Neighborhood Physical Disorder

Neighborhood audit methods (AKA Systematic Social Observation) are often used to create measures of neighborhood built and social environments.  But even with the enhanced efficiency of virtual neighborhood audit methods using CANVAS-Street View, it is generally not possible to collect … Continue reading

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Newly Funded Work on Pedestrian Injury

We have recently been funded by NIH to conduct a four-year study of how urban design, the locations of alcohol selling establishments, night life districts and locations of services for the homeless influence pedestrian fatality risk.  We will be conducting … Continue reading

Posted in Active Transport, CANVAS, Economic Development, Methods, Pedestrian Injury, Safety, Street View, Tools, Urban Design, Walkability | Leave a comment

Measuring Neighborhood Walkability across Communities in the U.S. Over the Past Three Decades

The evidence on links between neighborhood walkability and physical activity and body mass index remains limited because there have been few longitudinal studies with repeated measures of neighborhood walkability and health behavior and outcomes.  While large cohort studies with long-term … Continue reading

Posted in Accelerometers, Active Transport, Adults, Methods, Physical Activity, Urban Design, Walkability | Leave a comment

How and where patterns of activity among older adults change over time

At BEH, we’re interested in how your residential neighborhood affects how physically active you are. But we’ve come to understand that being active as not just one thing and not merely a matter of expending calories. That is, walking is … Continue reading

Posted in Adults, Methods, Physical Activity, Physical Disorder | Leave a comment

Commandments for Variable Naming and Data Management

As we launched another multifaceted geographic data linkage study our multi-institution team, that includes researchers at Drexel University, Columbia University and the University of Washington, has developed a set of commandments to streamline and harmonize our data management, variable naming … Continue reading

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Steve Mooney receives Poster Award at Epidemiology Congress of the Americas 2016

Steve Mooney, a recently minted PhD who did his doctoral work with the BEH group, won a best poster presentation award at the 2016 Epidemiology Congress of the Americas for his work on the Neighborhood Environment-Wide Association Study design. Dr. … Continue reading

Posted in Methods, Physical Activity, Social Determinants, Urban Design | Leave a comment

Can Big Data get us Better Estimates of Neighborhood Disorder?

At the Built Environment and Health group, we try hard to measure neighborhood characteristics accurately. We systematically audit Street View imagery, we use LiDAR scans to assess tree canopy, and we use business registration records to profile neighborhood retail. A … Continue reading

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