Despite considerable focus on clustering as a dimension of segregation and the explosion of big location data, the extant literature has not explicitly examined residential racial segregation and the clustering of racially segregated space as an influence on mobility. Drawing on urban sociological theories, we test criteria contributing to individuals’ selection of key activity neighborhoods. Using a range of spatial data sources, we compare White and Black individuals’ choice of frequently visited neighborhoods in Chicago, stratified by whether residing in a contiguous segregated cluster (CSC). Discrete choice models show evidence for the impact of clustered residential segregation in individual decision-making. Net of distance, all groups are drawn to White CSC neighborhoods. White residents exhibit a pattern of geographic isolation, gravitating toward White CSC tracts and away from Black spaces, CSC and non-CSC alike. Black residents of Black CSC neighborhoods are more likely to have activity locations in White CSC neighborhoods than their own residential CSC, largely because of the relative institutional, amenity, and crime-related advantages of these areas. Results are robust to alternative specifications of choice sets and institutional deficits. Implications for understanding the social context of routine location choice and designing desegregation policies through behavioral “nudges” are discussed.

OBJECTIVES:Momentary feelings of safety carry significant implications for well-being in later life. Yet the role of social and built environments beyond residential neighborhoods remains underexplored. We investigated how dynamic social and physical features and spatial knowledge of activity spaces affect older adults' in situ feelings of safety. METHODS:Using unique data from the Chicago Health and Activity in Real-Time (CHART) study, we analyzed 5,833 geolocated ecological momentary assessments (EMAs) from 93 older adults. We linked EMA locations to Google Street View Images to measure streetscape features and Advan mobility flows to capture spatial knowledge. We estimated race-stratified multilevel models with EMAs nested within respondents and used a within-between decomposition to distinguish momentary exposure from between-person differences in average exposure. RESULTS:Momentary safety varied substantially across contexts, with distinct racial patterns. Being outdoors reduced safety for both race groups. White respondents reported lower safety in areas predominantly Black and of low socioeconomic status (SES) but greater safety in racially mixed, higher-SES neighborhoods. In contrast, Black respondents felt less safe in racially mixed and affluent White neighborhoods, reflecting varied experiences of being socially out of place. Physical disorder and built-environment cues predicted safety only among Whites, indicating that the meaning of disorder is socially conditioned rather than universal. Across both groups, spatial knowledge consistently increased perceived safety. DISCUSSION:Findings underscore the situational and racialized nature of safety in later life. While White older adults' safety perceptions respond to visible streetscape cues, Black older adults' perceptions reflect broader structural and contextual neighborhood characteristics.

Research on urban community effects on health has considered a range of collective social processes as potential links between economic disadvantage and health. We extend this focus to deaths of despair (DoD; drug overdose mortality and suicide) in rural counties by examining the association between a novel indicator of economic cynicism (perceptions that local communities have been 'left behind' economically) and DoD. We also consider a range of other aspects of social climate potentially relevant to health, including social network ties, collective efficacy and social and physical disorder. We draw on data from the 2018 Ohio Community Resilience Study to estimate county-level social process measures. Multilevel models of 2018-2022 age-adjusted DoD rates in 39 rural Ohio counties indicate that economic cynicism is associated with prepandemic rates of DoD and COVID-19 pandemic-associated increases in drug overdose mortality. Generalised structural equation models indicate that economic cynicism attenuates the association between economic disadvantage and drug overdose mortality by roughly 27% and the association with suicide by 50%. We discuss the importance of community-level social processes as factors in understanding rural area vulnerability to DoD.

Abstract We describe hypotheses about how features of urban settings—including location types, sociodemographic composition, and the extent of collective efficacy (CE)—are differentially related to Black and White individuals’ risks of experiencing discrimination while conducting routine activities. These hypotheses are then tested with data from a large, representative sample of caregivers in the Adolescent Health and Development in Context study (2014–2016). We find that Black individuals are twice as likely as White individuals to report experiencing discrimination in their routine activities, and this Black-White gap is further increased among workplaces, grocery stores, and businesses relative to other locations. Additionally, Black and White individuals report similarly increased probabilities of experiencing discrimination at schools. Consistent with an extension of research on “defended neighborhoods,” exposure to higher CE is positively associated with discrimination for Black individuals especially among areas high in socioeconomic status or high in proportion White population. However, for White individuals, exposure to higher CE is negatively associated with discrimination especially among areas low in socioeconomic status or low in proportion White population. This study underscores that measuring social processes at routine activity settings, rather than just in home neighborhoods, is essential for research on everyday well-being. Further, the findings complement calls to invest in the resource capacity of high-poverty and low-proportion White neighborhoods.

We explore alternative hypotheses regarding the association between activity space racial composition and risk behavior among Black-identifying urban youth. Racial isolation perspectives argue that exposure to Black segregated neighborhoods limits access to mainstream institutions and influence, increasing participation in risk behavior (violence, delinquency, and substance/alcohol use). An alternative compelled mobility perspective argues that Black youth spend a substantial amount of time in low proportion Black, largely white neighborhoods seeking organizational resources typically less available in segregated areas. These exposures may lead to discrimination-related strain, detachment from conventional norms, and elevated physiological stress, increasing the likelihood of risk behavior compared to Black youth who spend more time in same-race dominated activity spaces. We test these competing hypotheses employing data from the Columbus, Ohio, USA-based Adolescent Health and Development in Context study on the geospatial exposures and both survey and Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA)-reported behaviors of 506 Black youth ages 11-17. Contrary to the expectations of the isolation model, we find that greater exposure to residentially low proportion Black areas is associated with an increased likelihood of risk behavior for Black males. We consider implications of findings for extant theories and data collection approaches in research examining spatial effects on adolescent risk behavior.

ObjectivesEstimate the extent to which local variation in collective efficacy, a measure of social cohesion and norms toward intervention among individuals, is associated with the sub-neighborhood spatial patterning of violent crime in Columbus, OH.MethodsUsing estimates of local collective efficacy derived from survey data on individuals' perceptions of collective efficacy in the neighborhoods and at their routine activity locations collected as part of the Adolescent Health and Development in Context Study and incident-level, point-referenced crime data from the Ohio Incident-Based Reporting System, we fit inhomogeneous Poisson process models.ResultsWe find that net of neighborhood-level collective efficacy, a one standard deviation increase in deviation in the local collective efficacy score from the neighborhood average local collective efficacy score is associated with a decline in the violent crime intensity by a factor of 0.858.ConclusionsAffirming Jane Jacobs' arguments about informal social control dynamics at fine-grained levels, our study illustrates that collective efficacy operates and can be measured at sub-neighborhood levels across the entirety of a city. Our findings highlight the need to measure social processes at finer spatial scales in order to understand their effects on crime. Future research should prioritize collecting additional fine-grained data on social processes using individuals' perceptions of the locations they frequent as part of their everyday mobility patterns.

Exposure to areas high in violent crime is a potent stressor that influences health outcomes by chronically undermining safety and upregulating biological stress responses. We tested the hypothesis that the association between cortisol, as measured in head hair, and inflammation, as measured by C-Reactive Protein (CRP) in capillary blood, is dependent on the degree of violent crime within adolescents’ everyday activity spaces. Because structural inequities cause Black adolescents to spend more time in areas with higher rates of violent crime, we tested this hypothesis in Black and White youth separately. 137 adolescents (Mage = 15.55, 57% female, 52% Black, 48% White) participated in the study. We obtained continuous GPS-tracked data for one week to assess the average violent crime rate across the areas where participants spent time; biosamples were collected at the end of the week. Among Black adolescents, there was an interaction such that higher GPS-tracked activity space violent crime levels were associated with a positive and significant association between CRP and cortisol, consistent with models suggesting that stress can dysregulate immune-endocrine functioning. Conversely, for Black adolescents with low rates of exposure, cortisol had a negative association with CRP, consistent with a normative effect of glucocorticoid inhibition of inflammation. For White adolescents, cortisol and violence levels were significantly lower than for Black adolescents, and in this context, there was a weak main effect of violence exposure on CRP but no significant interaction. Results suggest the association between cortisol and inflammation varies across violent crime levels within the areas adolescents spend time and emphasize the importance of studying how an adolescent’s environment shapes biological responses to chronic stressors.

Minimal research has explored how child maltreatment shapes adolescents' exposure to risky environments within youth activity spaces (the places youth visit during their daily routine) which likely influences youth well-being. This study examined the extent to which child maltreatment and neighborhood disorder, individually and collectively, are associated with adolescents' exposure to physical and social disorder in their activity spaces. Participants were 1215 adolescents (47% boys, Mage = 14.26, SDage = 1.87) recruited from a Midwestern city in the United States. Multilevel modeling was conducted. The results indicated a positive association between child maltreatment and disordered activity spaces, with no significant moderation by residential neighborhood-level disorder. The findings point to the need for enhanced maltreatment prevention efforts and targeted interventions to mitigate environmental risks for adolescents with maltreatment histories.

As mobile phones become ubiquitous, high-frequency smartphone positioning data are increasingly being used by researchers studying the mobility patterns of individuals as they go about their daily routines and the consequences of these patterns for health, behavioral, and other outcomes. A complex data pipeline underlies empirical research leveraging mobile phone tracking data. A key component of this pipeline is transforming raw, time-stamped positions into analysis-ready data objects, typically space-time "trajectories." In this paper, we break down a key portion of the data analysis pipeline underlying the Adolescent Health and Development in Context (AHDC) Study, a large-scale, longitudinal study of youth residing in the Columbus, OH metropolitan area. Recognizing that the bespoke "binning algorithm" used by AHDC researchers resembles a time-series filtering algorithm, we propose a statistical framework - a formal probability model and computational approach to inference - inspired by the binning algorithm for transforming noisy, time-stamped geographic positioning observations into mobility trajectories that capture periods of travel and stability. Our framework, unlike the binning algorithm, allows for formal smoothing via a particle Gibbs algorithm, improving estimation of trajectories as compared to the original binning algorithm. We argue that our framework can be used as a default data processing tool for future mobile-phone tracking studies.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE:A stress-is-enhancing mindset refers to viewing the nature of stress as enhancing rather than debilitating and has been linked to better mental health in response to stressors. We examined the cross-sectional and longitudinal link between stress mindset and two mental health outcomes, depressive symptoms and cannabis use, over the COVID-19 pandemic in a diverse sample of adolescents. DESIGN AND METHODS:A community sample of adolescents completed measures assessing depressive symptoms, cannabis use, and intentions to use cannabis at three time points (T1: 2018-2020, N = 299, T2: 2020, N = 219, T3: 2021, N = 173). Participants completed the stress mindset measure at T2. RESULTS:Cross-sectionally, a more stress-is-enhancing mindset was associated with fewer depressive symptoms and reduced intentions to use cannabis, which in turn were associated with less cannabis use. Longitudinally, a more stress-is-enhancing mindset was associated with fewer depressive symptoms and indirectly associated with less future cannabis use through behavioral intentions to use cannabis. CONCLUSION:This study establishes a stress-is-enhancing mindset as a protective factor against cannabis use and contributes to a growing literature that stress mindset is protective against depression, indicating that stress mindset may be an important protective factor even in the face of naturalistic, chronic stressors.

Introduction Adolescents experience high levels of loneliness, which is linked to poor health in adulthood. Loneliness may contribute to poor health through chronic dysregulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis. In this analysis, we examined the associations between survey- and ecological momentary assessment (EMA)-based measures of loneliness and hair cortisol concentrations (HCC) in a sample of 1102 adolescents and assessed sex differences in this relationship. Methods Data came from wave 1 of the Adolescent Health and Development in Context study. We conducted a series of multivariable linear regression models to examine the associations between loneliness and HCC. Models were adjusted for adolescent and caregiver demographics, adolescent clinical factors, adolescent hair care practices, and adolescent lifetime mental health diagnosis and current psychotropic medication use. An interaction term between sex and loneliness was added to assess for effect moderation. Results In our sample, the mean HCC was 1.35pg/mg (SD=1.1). The mean for the unstandardized survey loneliness measure was 1.79 (SD=0.79) for the total analytic sample. The unstandardized mean for the EMA loneliness measure was - 0.02 (SD=2.1) for the total analytic sample. In model one testing the bivariate linear relationship between loneliness and HCC, higher loneliness via survey and EMA measures was associated with lower HCC (Survey: b= - 0.10, SE=0.03, p=.004; EMA: b= - 0.09, SE=0.03, p=.005). In model two, higher loneliness remained significantly associated with lower HCC (Survey: b= - 0.07, SE=0.03, p=.023; EMA: b= - 0.07, SE=0.03, p=.037), after controlling for the following covariates: sociodemographic factors, pubertal development and BMI, corticosteroid use, hair care practices, season of collection and assayed hair length. In model 3, youth lifetime mental health diagnosis and current psychotropic medication use were added into the regression model, and higher loneliness remained significantly associated with lower HCC (Survey: b= - 0.07, SE=0.03, p=.029; EMA: b= - 0.07, SE=0.03, p=.039). There was no effect modification by sex (Survey: b=0.04, SE=0.06, p=.552; EMA: b= - 0.01, SE=0.06, p=.843). Conclusions In our analysis, both survey- and EMA-reported loneliness measures were associated with lower HCC. No evidence of an interaction between sex and loneliness was observed. Future research is needed to validate these findings and investigate longitudinal relationships among adolescent loneliness, stress physiology, and downstream health sequelae.

Purpose: Exposure to adversity during childhood and adolescence is associated with numerous health conditions in adulthood; telomere shortening may be a mechanism through which adversity contributes to poor outcomes. We studied three areas of adversity (parent relational instability, child household instability, and financial instability) occurring during three epochs across childhood and adolescence and their associations with telomere length during adolescence. Methods: Data were obtained from the first wave of a longitudinal cohort study of youth aged 11-17 and their primary caregiver. Caregivers completed demographic and adversity questionnaires; youth provided a saliva sample for DNA extraction for telomere analysis. Results: Of 879 youth, over half experienced some adversity. More than one third experienced parent relational instability in each age epoch, with nearly a quarter experiencing parent relational instability in all age epochs. Youth experienced a similar pattern of financial instability but lower rates of child household instability. Youth experiencing parent relational instability at two or three epochs had shorter telomeres compared to those without any parent relational instability (p < .004). Youth who experienced child household instability in two age epochs had shorter telomeres (p = .003) and youth who experienced financial instability across all three epochs had shorter telomeres (p = .013) compared to youth without these adversities. Conclusion: Continuing exposure to adversity in early childhood may be more likely to affect telomere length. Research is needed to further determine adversities exerting the most effect and to understand if early telomere shortening has long term health effects.

Home is a locus of everyday activity among a growing population of Americans who are "aging in place," and for whom leaving the home is generally thought to benefit quality of life and well-being. Sociological and criminological theory has often assumed that higher levels of local crime constrain individuals' activities to the residential environment, although few studies have empirically tested this assumption. We use longitudinal smartphone-based GPS data and ecological momentary assessments from 409 older adults in the Chicago Health and Activity Space in Real-Time study, linked with administrative crime data, to test this relationship through a series of multilevel linear regression models. Our findings suggest that older adults living in higher crime areas spend less time at home, on average, compared to older adults who live in lower crime areas. This association is especially evident among older adults who experience higher levels of unsafety at home. We discuss the implication that neighborhood characteristics can permeate the boundaries of the home, adversely affecting an already vulnerable population in ways that may exacerbate inequality in community engagement, collective efficacy, and health. Our findings prompt a more nuanced understanding of what leaving the home represents among the aging population.

A longstanding urban sociological literature emphasizes the geographic isolation of city dwellers in residence and everyday routines, expecting exposures to neighborhood racial and socio-economic structure driven principally by city-wide segregation and the role of proximity and homophily in mobility. The compelled mobility approach emphasizes the uneven distribution of organizational and institutional resources across urban space, expecting residents of poor Black-segregated neighborhoods to exhibit non-trivial levels of everyday exposure to White, non-poor areas for resource seeking. We use two sets of location data in the hypersegregated Chicago metro to examine these two approaches: Global Positioning System (GPS) location tracking on a sample of older adults from the Chicago Health and Activity Space in Real-Time (CHART) study and travel diaries on a sample of younger adults by the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP). We introduce a novel and flexible individual-level method for assessing activity space exposures that accounts for the spatially proximate environment around home. Analyses reveal that activity space contexts mimic the racial/ethnic and socio-economic landscape of respondents' broad residential environment. However, after residential-based adjustment, Black younger (CMAP) adults from poor Black neighborhoods are disproportionately exposed to Whiter, less Black but less non-poor neighborhoods. Older (CHART) adult activity spaces align more closely with their residential areas; however, activity spaces of poor-Black-neighborhood-residing CHART Blacks are systematically poorer and, less consistently, more Black and less White after local area adjustment. Implications for understanding contextual exposures on well-being and the potential for age or cohort differences in isolation are discussed.

Purpose: The everyday experience of safety promotes health and successful development during adolescence. To date, few studies have examined racial variation in the spatial determinants of inthe-moment perceived safety. Methods: Drawing on data from the Columbus, Ohio-based Adolescent Health and Development in Context study (N 1/4 1,405), we consider the influence of intraindividual variability in Global Posiexposure to residentially White-dominated neighborhoods also reduces perceived safety, but only focus on the consequences of residing in Black segregated neighborhoods may obscure potentially (c) 2024 Published by Elsevier Inc. on behalf of Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine.

Collective efficacy -- the capacity of communities to exert social control toward the realization of their shared goals -- is a foundational concept in the urban sociology and neighborhood effects literature. Traditionally, empirical studies of collective efficacy use large sample surveys to estimate collective efficacy of different neighborhoods within an urban setting. Such studies have demonstrated an association between collective efficacy and local variation in community violence, educational achievement, and health. Unlike traditional collective efficacy measurement strategies, the Adolescent Health and Development in Context (AHDC) Study implemented a new approach, obtaining spatially-referenced, place-based ratings of collective efficacy from a representative sample of individuals residing in Columbus, OH. In this paper, we introduce a novel nonstationary spatial model for interpolation of the AHDC collective efficacy ratings across the study area which leverages administrative data on land use. Our constructive model specification strategy involves dimension expansion of a latent spatial process and the use of a filter defined by the land-use partition of the study region to connect the latent multivariate spatial process to the observed ordinal ratings of collective efficacy. Careful consideration is given to the issues of parameter identifiability, computational efficiency of an MCMC algorithm for model fitting, and fine-scale spatial prediction of collective efficacy.