BACKGROUND The built environment, a key component of environmental health, may be an important contributor to health disparities, particularly for reproductive health outcomes. OBJECTIVE In this study we investigated the relationship between seven indices of residential built environment quality and adverse reproductive outcomes for the City of Durham, North Carolina (USA). METHODS We surve...

Married adults show better psychological adjustment and physical health than their separated/divorced or never-married counterparts. However, this apparent "marriage benefit" may be due to social selection, social causation, or both processes. Genetically informed research designs offer critical advantages for helping to disentangle selection from causation by controlling for measured and unmea...

BACKGROUND The objectives of this study were to use the Rasch model to 1) assess the psychometric properties of a physical environmental audit instrument and 2) to develop indices of interrelated environmental attributes that summarize environmental supportiveness for walking. METHODS A set of items were derived representing two conceptual physical environmental constructs: 1) functional/safe...

Indices summarizing community structure are used to evaluate fundamental community ecology, species interaction, biogeographical factors, and environmental stress. Some of these indices are insensitive to gross community changes induced by contaminants of pollution. Diversity indices and similarity indices are reviewed considering their ecological application, both theoretical and practical. Fo...