Background: Neighborhood conditions influence health, well being and individual’s economic chances for the future. In NYC cause specific mortality rates are consistently higher in poorer as compared wealthier neighborhood (see Info-Graphix section).
 Diabetes Mortality by Zip Code Poverty Rate, NYC 2013 The NY Times recently reported extensively on a large study showing how neighborhood circumstances affect the chances for achieving upward mobility for children from low income families. Cluster faculty have conducted research showing that neighborhood disadvantage is associated with poorer cognitive development in children, higher body mass index, and smoking-related DNA damage in prostate tissue. |
The Mix: The trials and tribulations of living in disadvantaged inner city neighborhoods has been a perennial theme for ska and reggae artists. As the home to many early performers (Bob Marley, Bunny Wailer, Peter Tosh, Delroy Wilson, and Alton Ellis), life in the tough Trench Town neighborhood of Kingston Jamaica served as the inspiration for many early reggae songs. The troubles in the Brixton neighborhood in London, home to a large Caribbean population that saw major riots in 1981 and 1985, also served as the inspiration for several reggae songs.
The play list kicks off with “007 – Shanty Town” by Desmond Decker, who counterpoints the glamour of urban life depicted in the 007 and Oceans 11 movies with the realities of violence in the shanty towns of Jamaica. Three Bob Marley tracks reflect on life in Trench Town, while Steel Pulse similarly describe life in Handsworth, Birmingham. Songs by by The Clash and Eddie Grant focus on Brixton, while in “Ghost Town”, the Specials describe the urban decline they witnessed while on tour across England. Finally, Dr. Israel sings about life in poor neighborhoods in New York City.
|
Follow Us On:
Faculty Publications on:
PubMed Feed- Navigating Dual-Harm: Integrating Self- and Other-Harm Into Public Health Inquiry
- Leveraging spatiotemporal Bayesian analysis to unravel polysubstance use and overdose risk: Opportunities and challenges
- Dietary intake of beta-cryptoxanthin, but not other carotenoids, is associated with less frequent anxiety symptoms in U.S. adults: A cross-sectional analysis of NHANES, 2007-2012
- Inconsistent consistency: evaluating the well-defined intervention assumption in applied epidemiological research
- Using simulations to explore the conditions under which "true" dose-response relationships are detectable for environmental exposures: polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and birthweight: a case study
- Perinatal discrimination and maternal depressive symptoms associated with infant development in African American families
- Neighborhood-level adversity and inflammation among sexual minority men living with HIV
- Human genomic regions of systemic interindividual epigenetic variation are implicated in neurodevelopmental and metabolic disorders
- A scoping review on the methods used to assess health-related quality of life and disability burden in evaluations of road safety interventions
- Building a Culture of Health Through the Built Environment: Impact of a Cluster Randomized Trial Remediating Vacant and Abandoned Property on Health Mindsets