College of Environmental Design

Community Violence Intervention (CVI) involves recruiting likely gun violence offenders using street outreach and offering mentorship, social services and other supports to discourage future firearm violence. Grounded in public health, CVI interventions identify an individual’s risk factors and work to enhance protective and buffering factors that can help prevent a client from offending. This paper reviews evaluations of CVI interventions to understand how participants’ risk factors are defined and measured. We used keywords to identify 38 published evaluations of 32 different CVI interventions that recruited community members and used street-outreach as the primary mode of engagement. We then used the PRISMA scoping review methodology to identify categories of risk and protective factors to screen each published evaluation for whether and how they measured participants’ risk, protective and buffering factors at program onset. We found that 56% (18/32) of evaluations included some demographic information about participants and 44% (14/32) provided additional details about their educational or employment status. The criminal justice history was reported in 59% (19/32) and gang or group affiliation in 47% (15/32) of the evaluations we reviewed. The CVI participants’ history related to gun violence was documented in 53% (17/32). Far fewer evaluations documented potential assets, buffering or protective factors of CVI participants: only 16% (5/32) reported on whether any clients were receiving social services at intake and only 6% (2/32) documented any clients’ strengths or protective factors. We also found that no two programs captured the same information about gang, criminal justice, gun violence or social risk factors. Preliminary findings suggest that many CVI programs may not be capturing whether clients face known risk factors for future gun use, and that these programs rarely capture potential protective and buffering factors that might inform program service delivery and potentially enhance the likelihood that interventions will help prevent future gun use. This study aims to support the emerging field of CVI as it works to build evidence that these interventions successfully address the specific needs of urban young people and prevent them from engaging in firearm offending.

Local governments working in partnership with communities can institutionalize practices that promote health equity. We offer a case study of how one city in the US is implementing Health in All Policies (HiAP) with the explicit aim of promoting health equity. We use participant observations, original document reviews and interviews to describe how Richmond, California, is building new partnerships, programs and practices with community-based organizations and within government itself as part of the implementation of its HiAP Ordinance. We also report on indicators that were identified by community and government stakeholders for tracking progress toward improving place-based determinants of population health. We find that the responsibility for implementing Richmond's HiAP Ordinance rests on a new institution within local government and this entity is building new partnerships, promoting innovative policies and augmenting practices toward greater health equity. We also reveal how city governments and community partners can collaboratively track progress toward health equity using locally gathered data.

Air pollution, specifically PM2.5, has become a significant global concern owing to its detrimental impacts on public health. Even so, the high-resolution monitoring of air pollution is still a challenge on a global scale. To cope with this, machine learning (ML) techniques have been utilized to infer the concentration of air pollutants at a fine scale. In this study, we propose DeepAir, a learning framework for estimating PM2.5 concentrations at a fine scale with sparsely distributed observations. DeepAir integrates a pre-trained convolutional neural network with the LightGBM method. This framework estimates the PM2.5 concentration of a given patch, utilizing a synergy of geographical information, meteorological conditions, and satellite observations. We select California as the focal region and train the model with data from 2014 to 2017 provided by 130 PM2.5 observation stations in the state. Upon training, the model can be applied to estimate the daily PM2.5 concentrations at 1 km resolution across California. Our methodology meticulously incorporates meteorological variables, with a particular emphasis on wildfire propagation, and contemplates the complex interplay of various features. To ascertain the efficacy of our model, we employ the 10-fold cross-validation technique, which confirms that our model surpasses traditional ML and standalone deep learning methods.

BACKGROUND: Gun violence is a critical public health issue, contributing to the disproportionate burden of health inequities among racially and economically marginalized populations. Advance Peace, a community-driven gun reduction program that integrates street outreach workers to interrupt conflicts with trauma-informed programming to provide mentorship and support for young people at the center of urban gun violence, may be a strategy to reduce gun violence and build healthy communities. We assessed whether the implementation of Advance Peace in Fresno, California was associated with a reduction in gun-related violence, including homicides and assaults. We hypothesized that post-implementation of Advance Peace, there would be a reduction in both gun-related homicides and assaults. METHODS: Leveraging crime statistics from the Fresno Police Department on gun-related homicides and assaults between January 2014 and June 2023, we evaluated the impact of Advance Peace programming, implemented beginning in July 2021, on gun violence in Fresno. Descriptive analysis assessed average gun violence rates over time. We used interrupted time series models to assess the rates of gun violence associated with the implementation of Advance Peace in Fresno. RESULTS: In Fresno, there was evidence of a reduction in crime rates following the introduction of Advance Peace intervention. Two years post-intervention, there was a 46% decrease in the rate of all gun-related crimes, including both homicides and assaults (rate ratio: 0.54, 95% CI: 0.36-0.81). The intervention was also associated with a reduction in the rate of gun-related homicides (RR = 0.45, 95% CI: 0.21-0.95) and the rate of gun-related assaults (RR = 0.58, 95% CI: 0.38-0.89). CONCLUSION: Findings from this study demonstrate that Advance Peace may be an effective strategy to reduce gun violence.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0328780.].

Despite the relevance of cities and city policies for health, there has been limited examination of large numbers of cities aimed at characterizing urban health determinants and identifying effective policies. The relatively few comparative studies that exist include few cities in lower and middle income countries. The Salud Urbana en America Latina study (SALURBAL) was launched in 2017 to address this gap. The study has four aims: (1) to investigate social and physical environment factors associated with health differences across and within cities; (2) to document the health impact of urban policies and interventions; (3) to use systems approaches to better understand dynamics and identify opportunities for intervention and (4) to create a new dialogue about the drivers of health in cities and their policy implications and support action. Beyond these aims SALURBAL, has an overarching goal of supporting collaborative policy relevant research and capacity -building that engages individuals and institutions from across Latin America. In this review we provide an update on the SALURBAL data resource and collaborative approach and summarize key findings from the first aim of the study. We also describe key elements of our approach, challenges we have faced and how we have overcome them, and identify key opportunities to support policy relevant evidence generation in urban health for the future.

This paper examines transit ridership and its role in downtowns in five San Francisco Bay Area cities pre- and post-COVID. We analyze transit ridership data from 2019 and 2022-24, review transit agency responses to COVID’s consequences, and examine the plans and proposals for downtowns adopted by the cities and those developed by business improvement districts (BIDs). We draw upon focus groups we held with transit users and interviews we conducted with key stakeholders to gain additional information and insights. We found that trips to, from and within our five case study downtowns account for a significant share of overall regional transit ridership, a finding that underscores downtown transit’s importance to state and regional goals for greenhouse gas reduction, pollution abatement, economic prosperity, and equity and inclusion. For the five downtowns, transit ridership is on a path to recovery but as of early 2024 was still falling short of pre-COVID levels, leaving transit agencies facing financial shortfalls despite service adjustments and other cost-cutting measures. The downtowns with concentrations of employment that generally depend on face to face contact (healthcare, education), are faring better than those where working remotely suffices and this appears to be largely independent of the workers’ income levels. For general offices, the longer transit trips that rail services provide have not recovered as quickly as shorter bus trips. Downtown plans for the five cities assume transit will be available and used, but have not been updated to deal with changed conditions. The case studies’ city officials and business leaders have proposed additional housing, sports events, and frequent festivals and farmers markets as ways to invigorate downtowns. While these strategies could lead to more transit use, they are unlikely to make up for the losses in office worker transit use, a consequence of increased working at home or in a hybrid home-office mode. Since recovery to previous levels may take several more years, finding ways to support transit in the meantime will be important.