2012 — 2014 |
Hernandez, Diana |
R13Activity Code Description: To support recipient sponsored and directed international, national or regional meetings, conferences and workshops. U13Activity Code Description: To support international, national or regional meetings, conferences and workshops where substantial programmatic involvement is planned to assist the recipient. |
Inter-City Study of Community Engagement in Parks, Children and Adolescent Health @ Columbia University Health Sciences
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The public health literature supports the importance of exposure to nature and health, the role of safe parks in promoting active living and the need for deep resident engagement in the creation of healthy communities. There is less evidence on the public health practices and park-based interventions that are most effective in the promotion of parks revitalization and the wide-spread use of parks across the life span. Furthermore, the free resource of parks is critical to health of poor and minority neighborhoods but those parks are often least well maintained. Because large urban parks present in the vast majority of US cities, this is a significant resource, often overlooked by public health practitioners. Thus, there is a critical need to identify ways in which collaboration and resource-sharing can be used to enhance parks as a site of health promotion and disease prevention. This project will advance the ways in which parks advocates from New York City, NY, and Pittsburgh, PA, partner with an academic center to conduct research. In order to launch this research partnership, we propose to work together over the next three years to develop a common language and a common research agenda. Our research hypothesis is: a series of meetings with three groups - parks advocates, community residents and researchers - will permit the development of a shared language about health and parks and a shared research agenda. We believe that the improvement of parks and public spaces will encourage residents to become more physically, socially and civically active, resulting in the reduction in negative health outcomes, especially obesity. Furthermore, the year round increased use of parks and the diversification of activities will, in turn, make these spaces safer and less violence-ridden. We propose to do this by building upon existing relationships among an academic center and three parks advocacy groups: the Columbia Center for Youth Violence Prevention, CLIMB, the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy (PA), and Partnerships for Parks (NY). Through a series of community forums, key stakeholders meetings and CBPR Advisory Board colloquia, we will develop a common language for our concerns and a common agenda for research. The resulting long-term CBPR agenda will be used to design studies that assess and measure the impact of current and future parks-based interventions developed with community participation. The project will be evaluated by documenting the growth of the CBPR Advisory Board (organizations involved), the strength and quality of the relationships among partners (content of Memoranda of Understanding) and the number of follow up research projects proposed and successfully funded. Our topic and CBPR approach are fueled by the shared interest of parks advocates and researchers in understanding how parks can be part of the nascent national effort to end health disparities. Public Health Relevance: This project is relevant to public health because it will help develop ways in which a publicly available resource - parks - can be used to promote health at the neighborhood level. Efforts geared at the individual to help reduce obesity or prevent violence are important but not sufficient to address these two health problems. This project is relevant to all the people served by the national system of large urban parks. This project has relevance for the national campaign against obesity, for active living, against violence, and for the elimination of health disparities.
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0.909 |
2014 — 2015 |
Hernandez, Diana |
R21Activity Code Description: To encourage the development of new research activities in categorical program areas. (Support generally is restricted in level of support and in time.) |
Assessing the Impact of Clean Heat Policy Intervention in New York City @ Columbia University Health Sciences
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This study will investigate the impacts of timely and progressive Clean Heat regulations that have a short implementation cycle ending to be fully executed by 2015. The proposed project will examine the variance in residential exposure to black carbon (BC) before and after implementation and analyze the policy process. BC is produced by any incomplete combustion process and is a surrogate tracer of different combustion sources. In NYC, major sources of BC include space heating and high density vehicle traffic (especially trucks).1,9-19 A significant contributor to the city's current BC emissions are buildings that burn residual oil (No. 4 and No. 6) for heating.14,18-19 Previous research has demonstrated that residual oil represents a significant environmental and public health threat. These environmental hazards are linked to a variety of health problems including cardiovascular disease, respiratory illness and lung cancer. A recent policy measure issued by the New York City Department of Environmental Protection mandates conversion from No. 6 fuel to cleaner burning fuel sources including lower sulfur No. 2 fuel, biodiesel or natural gas. This public health law is intended to address widespread air pollution by reducing fine particulate matter (PM2.5) emissions that produce soot and black carbon in NYC. As NYC is the most populated city in the United States, this new regulation marks one of the largest and most comprehensive pieces of environmental, energy and public health policy in the nation in the past decade. This study will substantially improve the evidence base for the efficacy of environmental and public health policies. We will measure residential indoor/outdoor air quality prior to heating fuel conversion in the 2013-2014 heating season and one-year post-conversion in the 2014-2015 heating season (Aim 1). We will also use the NYC Clean Heat policy intervention as a case study and identify the contextual and process-level factors involved in the effective passage and implementation of these laws (Aim 2). Together the mixed method approaches in Aims 1 and 2 will yield contextualized results to demonstrate changes in domestic and neighborhood levels of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) associated with BC generated in buildings that burn residual oil (i.e., No. 6), but by legal mandate are obligated to convert to cleaner burning fuel sources before the 2014/2015 heating season. The proposed study will document changes associated with the Clean Heat regulations in a neighborhood context beset by asthma and other adverse health effects linked to BC exposure to address issues related to health disparities. If successful our innovative study design will advance our scientific knowledge about residential exposure changes to BC in the aftermath of this policy intervention and the impact on vulnerable populations. Responsive to NIEHS' Strategic Themes, the proposed study focuses on exposure research and health, the translation of science to public policy, health disparities, interdisciplinary approaches to environmental health, diversity and the broad dissemination of research findings.
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0.909 |
2018 — 2020 |
Hernandez, Diana |
P30Activity Code Description: To support shared resources and facilities for categorical research by a number of investigators from different disciplines who provide a multidisciplinary approach to a joint research effort or from the same discipline who focus on a common research problem. The core grant is integrated with the center's component projects or program projects, though funded independently from them. This support, by providing more accessible resources, is expected to assure a greater productivity than from the separate projects and program projects. |
Community Engagement Core @ Columbia University Health Sciences
Project Summary of the Community Engagement Core (CEC) The Community Engagement Core (CEC) of the Center for Environmental Health in Northern Manhattan (CEHNM) conducts and actively disseminates our Center?s cutting-edge, community-engaged environmental health research, making it accessible to community members, policy-makers, researchers and educators, public health practitioners, and healthcare providers through relationship-building and innovative dissemination of scientific findings via in-person and technology-based communication methods. Locally, CEHNM has joined forces with community partners, including WE ACT for Environmental Justice, Inc. (WE ACT), South Bronx Unite, and Little Sisters of the Assumption, all of which are well rooted within the markedly disadvantaged, medically underserved, environmentally burdened Northern Manhattan and South Bronx communities. The CEC has ongoing, successful partnerships by which we identify these communities? concerns, provide information about CEHNM findings that can be used to address them, and engage community and other stakeholders in dialogues to promote sound personal and policy decisions about environmental health. We propose to realize broader national and international outreach through widespread communications via media and digital platforms. The CEC?s ongoing efforts to promote healthy and resilient homes and communities meaningfully address a wide array of environmental health issues, including facilitating conversion to clean heating, reducing local vehicular emissions, climate resilience, and emergency preparedness among vulnerable groups. This focus fully leverages the strengths and expertise of our new CEC director, Dr. Diana Hernández, and is the ideal outgrowth for CEHNM?s overall strategic vision and organizational structure, which emphasizes the translation of scientific evidence into prevention. With new leadership and additional community partners, we have substantial momentum to support existing projects and begin new initiatives. Moving forward, the CEC will collaborate with numerous stakeholders, including those who serve on our stakeholder advisory board (SAB)? which features distinguished multi-sectoral advisors involved in education, the news media and communication, and local and regional government agencies?to provide community-engaged initiatives. Our specific aims are to: 1) foster effective collaboration between community members and Center investigators; 2) broaden partnerships to support environmental health policy and advocacy; 3) implement an active communications strategy; 4) engage in multi-level training and outreach and engagement activities; and 5) evaluate the impact of our work.
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0.909 |
2020 — 2021 |
Hernandez, Diana |
R01Activity Code Description: To support a discrete, specified, circumscribed project to be performed by the named investigator(s) in an area representing his or her specific interest and competencies. |
A Randomized Controlled Trial to Support Smoke-Free Policy Compliance in Public Housing @ Columbia University Health Sciences
Project Summary Tobacco use remains a leading cause of preventable premature death in the United States, especially for racial/ethnic minorities and low-income populations. Public and multiunit housing are closely tied to tobacco- related disparities as vulnerable populations are most likely to live in multiunit housing with the highest rates of smoking and secondhand smoke exposure, while also the least likely to have access to smoke-free home environments. For example, New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) residents smoke at higher rates, report higher secondhand smoke exposure from an outside source and are surrounded by high density tobacco retail environments compared to other New Yorkers. Public housing is at the forefront of the smoke-free policy movement. In 2016, HUD mandated that all housing authorities adopt smoke-free policies, which affects all 3,300 housing authorities and 1.2 million households nationwide. NYCHA is the largest public housing provider in the nation; it houses more than 400,000 people in 326 public housing developments spanning over 2,400 buildings citywide. As of July 2018, all NYCHA housing units adopted a smoke-free policy affecting all properties. The implementation of this policy, the largest of its kind, represents a critical opportunity to examine and reduce public housing-related tobacco hazards. To date, no randomized controlled trials (RCT) have been conducted to test the effects of compliance strategies on resident smoking behavior and secondhand smoke exposure. The proposed design will be a borough-stratified, four-arm, factorial-design, cluster RCT that will target 128 randomly selected buildings (32 buildings per arm) in separate NYCHA developments. We will recruit and follow 8 randomly selected residents stratified by smoking status- 4 smokers and 4 non-smokers- per building (n=1024) into four arms: (1) relocation/cessation, (2) resident endorsement, (3) relocation/ cessation plus resident endorsement and (4)the standard approach (256 participants per arm). Outcomes will be assessed longitudinally using salivary cotinine and resident surveys to measure smoking behaviors and secondhand smoke exposures at 4 time points: baseline, 2, 6 and 12 months post-intervention. Qualitative data will also be collected via key informant interviews, focus groups and sensory observations of buildings. This mixed methods, pre-post with comparison RCT design overseen by a highly experienced, interdisciplinary team in partnership with NYCHA and a stakeholder advisory board. Aims include to experimentally test if policy compliance interventions reduce personal smoking behavior (Aim 1); reduce secondhand smoke exposure (Aim 2), and determine if the tobacco retail environment surrounding each building moderates the relationship between compliance interventions and smoking-related outcomes (Aim 3). This comprehensive, community engaged and social-ecologically informed RCT supports the design and implementation of interventions to optimize smoke-free housing compliance for populations with high burdens of tobacco-related disparities.
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0.909 |