Can neighborhood green space mitigate health inequalities? A study of socio-economic status and mental health
Section snippets
Background
Socio-economic disparities in health persist in society, and reducing health inequalities is recognized as a critical strategy for population health (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2013, Marmot and Bell, 2012, National Preventative Health Taskforce, 2009). Despite public health efforts to reduce inequalities, systematic and avoidable health disparities exist between people of lower and higher levels socio-economic status (SES), who in definition differ in terms of access to
Data source and participants
This study forms part of the Life Course Built Environment and Health project, a cross-sectional data linkage study exploring associations between built environment features and health across different life stages (children through to older adults) in Perth, Western Australia. The overall project methods are described in detail elsewhere (Villanueva et al., 2013). Briefly, participants were those who completed the Western Australian Health and Wellbeing Surveillance System (HWSS) survey,
Results
Table 1 shows the characteristics of the study sample. In total, slightly less than three quarters of participants reported low psychological distress. The distribution of psychological distress levels varied by IRSD quartiles as shown in Fig. 1 (unadjusted, chi-square: p<0.001). Table 2 shows park variables for each buffer area and each IRSD quartile. The total park area was larger for participants living in the highest IRSD areas. However, mean attractiveness score tended to be slightly
Discussion
This study explored whether characteristics of local green space (total area, mean attractiveness, highest attractiveness) within a range of buffers moderate the relationship between area-level SES and residents' psychological distress. As anticipated, we found that residents in lower SES areas were significantly more likely to have higher psychological distress than those in higher SES areas. Building on previous studies (Mitchell and Popham, 2008, Mitchell et al., 2015), we hypothesized first
Acknowledgments
The Department of Health of Western Australia and the WA Data Linkage Branch are gratefully acknowledged for providing the HWSS data. Spatial data were created based on information provided by and with the permission of the Western Australian Land Information Authority. Nick Middleton is gratefully acknowledged for his role in developing GIS scripts used for analyses, and processing GIS measures in 2010 and 2011. The Life Course Built Environment and Health project was supported by the Western
References (46)
- et al.
Interpreting scores on the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (K10)
Aust. NZ J. Public Health
(2001) - et al.
Accessibility and connectivity in physical activity studies: the impact of missing pedestrian data
Prev. Med.
(2008) - et al.
Neighborhood poverty, park use, and California city
Soc. Sci. Med.
(2012) - et al.
Use of neighbourhood parks: does socio-economic status matter? A four-city study
Public Health
(2013) - et al.
Do features of public open spaces vary according to neighbourhood socio-economic status?
Health Place
(2008) - et al.
Streetscape greenery and health: stress, social cohesion and physical activity as mediators
Soc. Sci. Med.
(2013) - et al.
Development of a Public Open Space Desktop Auditing Tool (POSDAT): a remote sensing approach
Appl. Geogr.
(2013) - et al.
Neighborhood green, social support, physical activity, and stress: assessing the cumulative impact
Health Place
(2011) - et al.
Quality or quantity? Exploring the relationship between public open space attributes and mental health in Perth, Western Australia
Soc. Sci. Med.
(2012) - et al.
Neighborhood characteristics favorable to outdoor physical activity: disparities by socioeconomic and racial/ethnic composition
Health Place
(2010)
Increasing walking – how important is distance to, attractiveness, and size of public open space?
Am. J. Prev. Med.
Restoration and stress relief through physical activities in forests and parks
Urban For. Urban Green.
Tracking restoration in natural and urban field settings
J. Environ. Psychol.
Disparities in park availability, features, and characteristics by social determinants of health within a U.S.-Mexico border urban area
Prev. Med.
Towards a better understanding of the relationship between greenspace and health: development of a theoretical framework
Landsc. Urban Plan.
Crime, fear of crime, environment, and mental health and wellbeing: mapping review of theories and causal pathways
Health Place
Fair society, healthy lives
Public Health
Effect of exposure to natural environment on health inequalities: an observational population study
Lancet
Neighborhood environments and socioeconomic inequalities in mental well-being
Am. J. Prev. Med.
Associations of neighbourhood greenness with physical and mental health: do walking, social coherence and local social interaction explain the relationships?
J. Epidemiol. Community Health
Social inequality in the prevalence of depressive disorders
J. Epidemiol. Community Health
Statistical Geography – Australian Standard Geographical Classification (ASGC), Digital Boundaries, 2006
Information Paper: An Introduction to Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas (SEIFA), 2006
Cited by (65)
Remote sensing of urban greenspace exposure and equality: Scaling effects from greenspace and population mapping
2023, Urban Forestry and Urban Greening