Our research focuses on how the social and physical environment intereact to influence personal health outcomes and behaviours.
Research Areas:
Our research focuses on how the social and physical environment intereact to influence personal health outcomes and behaviours.
Research Areas:
Introduction:
This research group focuses upon the ways in which the social and physical environment interact to influence personal health outcomes and health behaviours. Examples include the health effects of air pollution, contextual and compositional explanations of health related behaviours such as smoking patterns, spatial and socio-economic variations in lung cancer, and a comparison of rates of hospitalisation with deprivation levels.
The group has a particular interest in the health effects of exposure to air pollution, funded through a three year project on Air Pollution and Health in New Zealand (HAPiNZ) by the Health Research Council. This project also involves atmospheric researchers from the Earth-Atmosphere group.
The use of GIS applications is another area of strength, leading to epidemiological studies and research on the contextual influences on health and health behaviours. This is attracting a range of new external funding arrangements with agencies such as the Ministry of Health.
Researchers Involved:
Most research suggests that car commuters are exposed to higher concentrations of air pollutants than those who walk, cycle or use public transport, although several more recent studies consider active modes of travel to be the most affected. This purpose of this project is to assess the comparative risk associated with exposure to traffic pollution when travelling via different transport modes in New Zealand cities.
Objectives:
The research objectives were to:
Results:
The key results of this research are as follows:
Publications:
Kingham S, Longley I, Salmond J, Pattinson W and Shrestha K, 2012, Variations in exposure to traffic pollution while travelling by different modes in a low density, less congested city. Environmental Pollution, accepted.
Kingham, S , Pattinson W, Shrestha K, Longley I, Salmond J (2011) Determination of personal exposure to traffic pollution while travelling by different modes. NZ Transport Agency research report 457. 104pp.
Shrestha K, 2009,The contribution of micro- scale activities to personal exposure in commuting micro- environments. a thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Geography, University of Canterbury.
Pattinson W, 2009. Cyclist exposure to traffic pollution : microscale variance, the impact of route choice and comparisons to other modal choices in two New Zealand cities: a thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Geography, University of Canterbury.
Staff Involved:
Investigation of the ‘health gaps’ between advantaged and disadvantaged populations has been a common theme in health research, with much work indicating that socio-economic and ethnic disparities in health, have changed little or widened in recent years. However, work on the social dimensions of health and ill health have tended to use mortality as a health measure. Work by researchers in the Environment and Health research group has focused on an alternative measure of the health gap: smoking behaviour. While smoking rates have decreased in many countries this has been less true of New Zealand. While evidence suggests a general decline in smoking rates in New Zealand, during the 1990s this decline slowed or halted for certain ethnic groups with the result that ethnic differences in smoking rates have increased.
Work has focused on New Zealand where the degree of social inequality is among the highest in the world and in Scotland, a country with particularly high smoking rates. The focus for the research team has been the effects of social inequality on ethnic differences in smoking behaviour in New Zealand. Work has incorporated a temporal dimension by examining the role of changing social inequalities on smoking behaviour and has investigated the influence of ethnic residential segregation on Maori smoking rates. A book entitled Geographies of Smoking will be published in 2014 by Wiley-Blackwell.
Many developed economies, including New Zealand , are struggling with growing health inequalities and anticipating a growth in the burden of lifestyle-related diseases such as diabetes. Whilst the unequal distributions of structural and behavioural risk factors producing these problems are well understood, there has been less success in tackling them. Attention has recently turned away from risk factors to salutogenesis (literally, 'health creation'), in other words, asking 'what keeps people healthy', rather than 'what makes them sick?' Within this movement, attention has been focused on aspects of physical environment which promote good health and on the potentially health creating properties of contact with natural or green environments, commonly referred to as 'green space'.
The aims of this research are to:
The advent of reduced cost and mobile technology to measure air pollution has resulted in significant improvements in our understanding of the temporal and spatial variability of air quality in urban environments. However, to date, this has not resulted in an improved understanding of the relation between human exposure to air pollution and human morbidity or mortality.
This is a consequence in part of the poor quantification of air pollutant dose at population scales. Pollutant dose is a measure of the amount of air pollution absorbed by the body. Previous studies of pollutant dose have been limited to very small numbers of participants in laboratory settings due to the costs (financial and time) and invasive nature of the procedures
This project will run field trials in which volunteers will exercise at different levels of ambient pollution. Their pollutant dose will be tested prior to exercise and at intervals during and after exercise. The relation between ambient exposure and dose will then be evaluated.
Increasingly it is being accepted that active transport can be a real part of a sustainable and resilient transport policy. benefits include reduced carbon emission, increased activity, improvements in social capital and reduced congestion. This project is really a series of projects that in different ways are examining some of the key motivations for walking and cycling, while also identifying the barriers and suggesting policy recommendations that could increase the use of active transport nodes.
Safety is the most significant issue for potential cyclists, particularly in relation to vehicle driver behaviour and traffic volume. Other significant issues included having facilities at the destination for showering and changing, enjoyment, and the perception that car drivers are not courteous.
Kingham S, Koorey G and Taylor K, 2011, Assessment of the type of cycle infrastructure required to attract new cyclists. NZTA Report 449.
Project 2005-2007
Funding: $100,000
This project considers the development of innovative spatial analysis methods and applies them to the topical issue of road traffic accidents in Christchurch. We aim to examine spatial and temporal trends in road traffic accidents, and to assess the success, or otherwise, of road traffic accident reduction policy initiatives. These measures include both engineering solutions (eg. traffic calming) and social interventions (eg. encouraging ride-share, greater bus use). The methods developed and results obtained will have wider global applicability.
Spatial modelling techniques developed by the principle investigator will be extended and applied to data supplied in-kind by the Land Transport Safety Authority (LTSA) to create surfaces, or GIS maps depicting density of road accidents, at a variety of spatial scales, from specific road intersections to larger-scale neighbourhoods. These statistical surfaces can be created for accidents by location, time, or transport type and compared with predicted accident rates derived from simulated road traffic flows, using data supplied by Christchurch City Council (CCC) together with population data from the NZ population census. Crucially, we will be able to test the impact of implemented solutions by testing before and after scenarios.
The GeoHealth Laboratory undertakes applied research in the areas of health geography, spatial epidemiology and Geographical Information Systems. In particular, work in the GeoHealth Laboratory focuses upon how the local and national contexts shape health outcomes and health inequalities.
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Spatial Microsimulation is a quantitative geographical technique used to create simulated data by combining, or merging various datasets to populate and therefore create a new synthetic population that is as close as possible to the 'real’ population with an inbuilt geography.
SIMALBA: A spatial microsimulation model for Scotland (Funded by the ESRC and The Scottish Government)
(Ministry of Health PhD Scholarship: SimAotearoa - a spatial microsimulation model for policy analysis in NZ
To undertake Microsimulation of health and socio-economic variables at small area geographies
To create a powerful policy-relevant framework for NZ that will assist in assessing both current and future policy scenarios
To refine and develop existing modeling methods to become more policy relevant and that can be applied to NZ