NCBW Newsroom - The Research BeatThe National & International Scene | Regional and Local Actions | The Research Beat | Resources | Jobs, Grants & RFPs DOCTOR JACKSON ON POOR URBAN DESIGN & AMERICA'S HEALTH THREAT -> According to a Jan. 22nd Chronicle of Higher Education article, "Researchers can have revelatory moments in remarkable places--the African savannah, an ancient library, or the ruins of a lost civilization. But Richard J. Jackson's epiphany occurred in 1999 in a banal American landscape: a dismal stretch of the car-choked Buford Highway, near the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. Dr. Jackson, who was then the head of the National Center for Environmental Health at the CDC, was rushing to a meeting where leading epidemiologists would discuss the major health threats of the 21st century. On the side of the road he saw an elderly woman walking, bent with a load of shopping bags. It was a blisteringly hot day, and there was little hope that she would find public transportation." "At that moment, Dr. Jackson says, 'I realized that the major threat was how we had built America.' His center had already been dealing with problems that he suspected had origins in the built environment--asthma caused by particulates from cars and trucks, water contamination from excessive runoff, lead poisoning from contaminated houses and soil, and obesity, heart conditions, and depression exacerbated by stressful living conditions, long commutes, lack of access to fresh food, and isolating, car-oriented communities. Treatments could come in the form of pills, inhalers, and insulin shots, but real solutions had bigger implications..." Source: http://bit.ly/y85FUr DIET LESS IMPORTANT THAN BEING ACTIVE SAYS LEADING RESEARCHER BLAIR -> According to a Jan. 12th Montreal Gazette article, "With more than 500 research papers under his belt, several of which have been cited in excess of 1,000 times, Steven Blair is to fitness what the Beatles were to rock music. A certified industry pioneer, he changed the way we view exercise, being the first to discover that even little bits of physical activity improve health. Previously, exercise was thought to be of benefit only if done at an intensity or duration most people avoided. But Blair, in his 1989 landmark study of 10,224 men and 3,120 women, found that even a modest level of physical activity provided substantial health benefits to those who were more familiar with their couch than the local gym." "Suddenly walking, not just running, was considered exercise enough, making it easier for the average Joe and Jill to reap the benefits of being physically active. And if that weren't enough to make him a rock god among those who have a chronic fear of Lycra, marathons and sweatdrenched exercise, he also pioneered the notion that it's possible to be fit and fat, another praisewinning bit of research that earned him worldwide recognition..." Source: http://bit.ly/yYiqIv PEDESTRIAN DEATHS, BLAMING THE VICTIM: HEADPHONES EDITION -> In a Jan. 19th T4America blog entry, Stephen Lee Davis wrote, "A new academic study looking at the numbers of pedestrians killed while wearing headphones ignores the overwhelming majority of pedestrian deaths, providing a healthy dose of blaming the victim while turning a blind eye to the actual problem. At first glance, the numbers sound incredible. 'The number of headphone-wearing pedestrians seriously injured or killed near roadways and railways has tripled in six years...' Wow, they've tripled? That must be a lot, right? When you examine the numbers closely, though, it's clear that this study is examining a share of pedestrian fatalities so small as to be almost statistically insignificant when compared to the problem of pedestrian deaths writ large." "The study has been highly successful at winning credulous news coverage and shifting blame to the victims, but by focusing on a tiny sliver of fatalities it does more to obscure the true causes than explain what is happening. 'Oh, they're all wearing headphones now. That's why pedestrians are getting killed.' Let's stop for a minute and acknowledge that being distracted is never a good idea, whether driving or walking. Especially if you're navigating busy streets, you need all available senses at your disposal to make sure you arrive at your destination safely. That means not texting and keeping your eyes on the road while driving, and making sure that you can hear and see when walking. From 2000-2009 47,700 people were killed while walking in the U.S. This University of Maryland study found 116 deaths in 8 years where headphones were said to be involved, or about 0.3% of all pedestrian deaths during the study period..." Source: http://bit.ly/y4c8lg STRANGE BUT EXTREMELY VALUABLE SCIENCE OF HOW PEDESTRIANS BEHAVE -> A Dec. 17th Economist article suggests "Imagine that you are French. You are walking along a busy pavement in Paris and another pedestrian is approaching from the opposite direction. A collision will occur unless you each move out of the other's way. Which way do you step? The answer is almost certainly to the right. Replay the same scene in many parts of Asia, however, and you would probably move to the left. It is not obvious why. There is no instruction to head in a specific direction (South Korea, where there is a campaign to get people to walk on the right, is an exception). There is no simple correlation with the side of the road on which people drive: Londoners funnel to the right on pavements, for example. Instead, says Mehdi Moussaid of the Max Planck Institute in Berlin, this is a behaviour brought about by probabilities. If two opposing people guess each other's intentions correctly, each moving to one side and allowing the other past, then they are likely to choose to move the same way the next time they need to avoid a collision. The probability of a successful manoeuvre increases as more and more people adopt a bias in one direction, until the tendency sticks..." Source: http://bit.ly/xNBxfE Get a jump start on this news by subscribing to CenterLines. |
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