The relationship between neighborhood physical environment and social disorder, particularly crime, is of critical interest to urban economists and sociologists, as well as local governments. Over the past 50 years, various policy interventions to improve physical conditions in distressed neighborhoods have also been heralded for their potential to reduce crime. Urban renewal programs in the mi...

The growth of prisons and jails over the last thirty years transformed the social experience of American poverty. Penal confinement became commonplace for poor men of working age. Incarceration added to the unstable home life of poor children and their mothers, whose own imprisonment rates had also grown rapidly. Loı̈c Wacquant’s Prisons of Poverty (in part, first published in French in 1999) ca...

Two residential programs for dually diagnosed (severely mentally ill and substance abusing) homeless individuals in Philadelphia were compared in a quasi-experimental field study. Findings indicate that the experimental model, a hybrid psychosocial and drug rehabilitation program, did significantly better in maintaining clients in care and in successful rehabilitation than the comparison model,...

AIM To test the hypothesis that walking in a park has a greater positive effect on coronary artery disease (CAD) patients' hemodynamic parameters than walking in an urban environment. METHODS Twenty stable CAD patients were randomized into two groups: 30-minute walk on 7 consecutive days in either a city park or busy urban street. Wilcoxon signed-rank test was employed to study short-term (30...

Objective: To characterize the mental and physical functioning of subjects admitted to Beitostølen Healthsports Centre, and evaluate whether functioning was improved during rehabilitation. Material and methods: A total of 228 subjects admitted for rehabilitation completed the Medical Outcome Study Short Form 12 (SF-12) on admission and on discharge after approximately 4 weeks. A total of 174 su...

Stroke is one of leading cause of death and disability worldwide. Early detection during golden hour and treatment of individual neurological dysfunction in stroke using easy-to-access biomarkers based on a simple-to-use, cost-effective, clinically-valid screening tool can bring a paradigm shift in healthcare, both urban and rural. In our research we have designed a quantitative automatic home-...

This retrospective study was undertaken to identify the prevalence of hearing loss in the homeless population and its implications for vocational rehabilitation. Audiometric threshold data for adult residents of an urban homeless shelter were collected and reported. Subjects with hearing loss were identified and defined by their binaural high-frequency pure tone average (B-HFPTA). Those subject...

BACKGROUND Comprehensive and timely rehabilitation for total joint arthroplasty (TJA) is needed to maximize recovery from this elective surgical procedure for hip and knee arthritis. Administrative data do not capture the variation of treatment for rehabilitation across the continuum of care for TJA, so we conducted a survey for physiotherapists to report practice for TJA across the continuum o...

BACKGROUND The United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) is a milestone in the recognition of the human rights of persons with disabilities, including the right to health and rehabilitation. South Africa has signed and ratified the CRPD but still has a long way to go in reforming policies and systems in order to be in compliance with the convention. This p...

BACKGROUND People with disabilities face challenges accessing basic rehabilitation health care. In 2006, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) outlined the global necessity to meet the rehabilitation needs of people with disabilities, but this goal is often challenged by the undersupply and inequitable distribution of rehabilitation workers. While the a...