Department of Health, Behavior and Society, Johns Hopkins University, 615 N. Wolfe St, Baltimore, MD, 21205, USA.
Department of Epidemiology, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA.
Curr Environ Health Rep. 2024 Jun;11(2):288-299. doi: 10.1007/s40572-024-00445-8. Epub 2024 Apr 10.
Clearly defining and measuring neighborhood socioeconomic status (nSES) is a key first step in achieving environmental justice, as the disproportionate distribution of environmental hazards and access to resources is heavily influenced by socioeconomic factors. This scoping review explores the definition of neighborhoods, measurement of neighborhood socioeconomic status (nSES), and studies that evaluated the association between nSES and child health in accordance with PRISMA guidelines.
We identified 4112 articles published on US pediatric populations between 2013 and 2022. We identified 170 distinct indicators across seven broad domains of nSES used to create 121 different measures of nSES across the 206 publications included in this review. While there is considerable interest in nSES and children's health, there is also substantial variation in the measurement of neighborhood as a geographic unit and nSES as a construct. We observed methodological challenges related to the identification of neighborhood boundaries, indicator selection, and nSES measure definition(s). We discuss common pitfalls in neighborhood research that can complicate identifying, targeting, and resolving environmental injustices. Lastly, we put forward a series of recommendations to reduce measurement error and improve inference, in addition to reporting recommendations for neighborhoods and health research that can aid in improving our understanding of pathways between neighborhood context and child health, inform policy development, and allocate resources to achieve environmental justice.
综述目的：明确界定和衡量邻里社会经济地位（nSES）是实现环境正义的关键第一步，因为环境危害的不成比例分布和资源获取受到社会经济因素的严重影响。本范围综述根据 PRISMA 指南探讨了邻里的定义、邻里社会经济地位（nSES）的衡量以及评估 nSES 与儿童健康之间关联的研究。
最新发现：我们确定了 2013 年至 2022 年期间在美国儿科人群中发表的 4112 篇文章。我们确定了七个广泛的 nSES 领域中的 170 个不同指标，这些指标用于在本综述中包含的 206 篇出版物中创建 121 种不同的 nSES 衡量标准。尽管人们对 nSES 和儿童健康非常感兴趣，但作为地理单位的邻里以及作为构建的 nSES 的衡量标准也存在很大差异。我们观察到与邻里边界识别、指标选择和 nSES 衡量标准定义相关的方法学挑战。我们讨论了邻里研究中的常见陷阱，这些陷阱可能会使确定、瞄准和解决环境不公平问题变得复杂。最后，我们提出了一系列建议，以减少测量误差并提高推断能力，此外还提出了有关邻里和健康研究的报告建议，这些建议可以帮助我们更好地理解邻里环境与儿童健康之间的途径，为政策制定提供信息，并分配资源以实现环境正义。
