Epinephrine Auto-Injector Use Among Young Adults Aided By Financial Incentives: PRC Researcher Carolyn Cannuscio

In the August issue of Health Affairs, UPenn PRC Researchers David Grande, MD, MPA, and Daniel Polsky, Ph.D, investigate racial disparities in spatial accessibility of primary care among different neighborhoods in the city of Philadelphia. Noting that “areas of the city with high percentages of African Americans or Hispanics were likely to also be areas with poor primary care spatial accessibility” and that ” people who live in those areas might be forced to travel farther or wait longer, which creates additional barriers to primary care,” Grande and Polsky show similarities between their research and research on food deserts – neighborhoods which have limited access to healthy food. This study furthers research on neighborhood health risk and how the built environment impacts the health status of different urban populations.
In the April 2016 issue of Health and Social Care in the community, UPenn PRC Training and Evaluation Core Lead Doug Wiebe, Ph.D, and colleagues investigate factors in the physical and psycho-social well-being of low-resource, housing-unstable, single parent families living in violent neighborhoods in Philadelphia
The researchers looked at families who were participants in a housing-plus program in Philadelphia and the relationship between the characteristics of the neighborhoods in which the families lived and their perceptions of well-being and safety. Noting that health dynamics in this population are “not well-described,” the researchers sought to contribute a better understanding of how the stresses of where one lives impacts how well one can live.
Among the key findings:
In the January 2016 issue of Epidemiology, Doug Wiebe, PhD, UPenn PRC Training Core Lead, and other health researchers from the University of Pennsylvania analyze detailed activity paths of urban youth to investigate the interplay between their lived experiences, time spent in different environments, and risk of violent assault.
Since gunshot violence is now the leading cause of death among 10- to 24-year-old African American males and the second-leading cause of death among all males in that age group in the United States, identifying the factors in exposure to violence by guns and other weapons is critical. A key finding is that location matters.
Building on research which suggests youth violence is the end result of a web of factors that include alcohol use, access to firearms, and disadvantaged urban environments, Wiebe and his co-authors developed a new approach for studying the dynamics of activities in an urban environment. They found that the context of young people’s activities and characteristics of the places they spent time put them at risk to be assaulted or protected them from being assaulted, and certain activities appeared to trigger the onset of assault.
In the July 23, 2015 edition of Injury Prevention,http://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/21/2/140.long, UPenn PRC’s Doug Wiebe, PhD., joins researchers Jonathan Purtle, Rose Cheney, and Rochelle Dicker in examining the impact of fear appeal persuasive messaging on violence prevention programs in urban communities.
As an alternative to fear appeal, the authors recommend violence prevention programs that embrace trauma-informed practice and a social ecological approach. Trauma-informed practice acknowledges prior exposures to violence and provides services that recognize the social, emotional, biological and cognitive impacts of those experiences.