Centre for Urban Research, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) University, Melbourne, VIC 3000, Australia.
Murdoch Children's Research Institute, Parkville, VIC 3052, Australia.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 May 3;19(9):5549. doi: 10.3390/ijerph19095549.
Healthy development in the early years lays the foundations for children's ongoing physical, emotional, and social development. Children develop in multiple contexts, including their local neighbourhood. Neighbourhood-built environment characteristics, such as housing, walkability, traffic exposure, availability of services, facilities, and parks, are associated with a range of health and wellbeing outcomes across the life course, but evidence with early years' outcomes is still emerging. Data linkage techniques were used to assemble a dataset of spatial (objectively-measured) neighbourhood-built environment (BE) measures linked to participant addresses in the 2015 Australian Early Development Census (AEDC) for children living in the 21 most populous urban and regional Australian cities (n = 235,655) to help address this gap. This paper describes the methods used to develop this dataset. This linked dataset (AEDC-BE) is the first of its kind worldwide, enabling opportunities for identifying which features of the built environment are associated with ECD across Australia at scale, allow comparisons between diverse contexts, and the identification of where best to intervene. National data coverage provides statistical power to model real-world complexities, such as differences by city, state/territory, and remoteness. The neighbourhood-built environment can be modified by policy and practice at scale, and has been identified as a way to help reduce inequitable early childhood development outcomes.
早期的健康发展为儿童的身体、情感和社会发展奠定了基础。儿童在多种环境中发展，包括他们所在的社区。社区建筑环境特征，如住房、可步行性、交通暴露、服务、设施和公园的可用性，与整个生命周期内的一系列健康和幸福感结果相关，但与早期结果相关的证据仍在不断涌现。本研究使用数据链接技术，将空间（客观测量）社区建筑环境（BE）措施与居住在澳大利亚 21 个人口最多的城市和地区的 2015 年澳大利亚早期发展普查（AEDC）中参与者地址相关联，以组装一个数据集（n = 235655），以帮助解决这一差距。本文介绍了开发该数据集的方法。这个链接数据集（AEDC-BE）是世界上第一个此类数据集，使我们能够确定哪些建筑环境特征与澳大利亚各地的儿童早期发展相关，允许在不同背景下进行比较，并确定在哪里进行最佳干预。国家数据覆盖范围为模型化现实世界的复杂性提供了统计能力，例如城市、州/地区和偏远地区之间的差异。社区建筑环境可以通过政策和实践进行大规模的修改，并已被确定为一种帮助减少儿童早期发展结果不平等的方法。
