EPA Releases Updated Health Indicators Database [reblog]

From the 23 July 2015 ResearchBuzz post

 

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has released updated environmental and public health indicators and made them available in an online database. “This is an online update to EPA’s Report on the Environment. Users can explore 85 individual indicators– on our air, water, land, human exposure, health and ecological condition– using interactive graphs, tables, and maps, and download the data for each indicator.”

HIGHLIGHTED STORIES:Los Angeles ‘Health Atlas’ Show Alarming Disparities Between Neighborhoods

“More than 100 health indicators — such as obesity, coronary disease and asthma — were studied within neighborhoods across Los Angeles and compiled into a health atlas, which includes a series of 115 maps. Results show that while economic disparities do affect health, so does land use. The atlas was released by former Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on his last day in office.

“Too often a person’s neighborhood determines their health destiny,” Villaraigosa said. The goal of compiling the atlas, he noted, was to ensure that city officials would consider how future development impacts neighborhoods where bike lanes, walking paths and parks could be integrated with new housing developments and transportation hubs.”

 

saaphi

In addition to socioeconomic disparities, the proximity of parks, walking paths and bike lanes affects the health of residents of Los Angeles. This correlation was discovered when 100 health indicators (including obesity, coronary heart disease, and asthma) were studied in neighborhoods across Los Angeles and compiled into a “health atlas.” Former mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is passing this information to the new mayor, Eric Garcetti, in the hopes that city departments will consider the importance of reducing environmental disparities in future development.

Read More at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/08/los-angeles-health-atlas_n_3557778.html

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Research Reveals Counties With Thriving Small Businesses Have Healthier Residents

Research Reveals Counties With Thriving Small Businesses Have Healthier Residents

From the 9 February 2012 Medical News Today article

Counties and parishes with a greater concentration of small, locally-owned businesses have healthier populations – with lower rates of mortality, obesity anddiabetes – than do those that rely on large companies with “absentee” owners, according to a national study by sociologists at LSU and Baylor University. …

…”Some communities appear to have thriving small business sectors that feature entrepreneurial cultures that promote public health. A place like this has a can-do climate, a practical problem-solving approach in which a community takes control of its own destiny,” said co-author Charles M. Tolbert, Ph.D., chair of the sociology department at Baylor. “The alternative is the attitude that ‘Things are out of our control’.”

Communities may become dependent on outside investment to solve problems, the researchers wrote.

Their findings are a departure from the traditional conclusion that “bigger is better.” …

..But small businesses are more likely to support bond issues for health infrastructures, recruit physicians, push for local anti-smoking legislation, promote community health programs and activities and support local farmers’ markets, researchers said.

They found that counties with a greater proportion of small businesses have a healthier population. …

Related articles

• Counties with thriving small businesses have healthier residents, researchers find (physorg.com)
• Healthy Local Economies Make Residents Healthy, Too (livescience.com)
• Counties with thriving small businesses have healthier residents, LSU and Baylor researchers find (eurekalert.org)
• Walmart is killing us all (jllowe.wordpress.com)