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Area-level Measures of the Social Environment: Operationalization, Pitfalls, and Ways Forward.

Marco HelbichYi ZengAbeed Sarker
Published in: Current topics in behavioral neurosciences (2024)
People's mental health is intertwined with the social environment in which they reside. This chapter explores approaches for quantifying the area-level social environment, focusing specifically on socioeconomic deprivation and social fragmentation. We discuss census data and administrative units, egocentric and ecometric approaches, neighborhood audits, social media data, and street view-based assessments. We close the chapter by discussing possible paths forward from associations between social environments and health to establishing causality, including longitudinal research designs and time-series social environmental indices.
Keyphrases
  • mental health
  • healthcare
  • social media
  • health information
  • electronic health record
  • physical activity
  • emergency department
  • risk assessment
  • machine learning
  • climate change
  • human health
  • adverse drug