Lecture by Professor Marynia Kolak at the Faculty of Economic Sciences – June 25

On June 25, Professor Marynia Kolak from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will be a guest at the Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw. As part of her visit, and at the invitation of the Spatial Warsaw research center, Professor Kolak will present a study entitled: “When Neighborhoods Change: A Spatiotemporal Analysis of the Social Determinants of Health in the Continental U.S. from 2014-2023”.

We cordially invite you to attend the lecture at 15:00 in Room A409. Those interested in participating remotely are kindly asked to contact Dr. Kateryna Zabarina (x$&vgU=/4!78YDT|}jB.G2_]#[d{eYIH~xp@/%?MJt+P}~P}L).

Below, we present an abstract of the presentation.

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Over half of various disease outcomes have been associated with variations in social, economic, and environmental characteristics at the neighborhood level in the United States. These social determinants of health (SDOH) influence the community context impacting both individual behaviors and population-level trends, and can be measured as complex multidimensional factors that vary across geographic space. Building on prior work, we extend a multifactor view of SDOH across three five-year time periods for all populated census tracts in the United States to examine structural changes in neighborhood-level environments. First, we identify stability in emergent trends of derived SDOH indices and geodemographic clusters at each time period, further validating the original index generation approach. Second, we observed a structural break in SDOH trends in the final time period, demonstrating a distinct Pandemic shift within some neighborhoods. Multiple census tracts emerged as outliers of concentrated wealth that had not been present as such prior; furthermore, several other tracts shifted towards less advantageous cluster typologies. Overall findings suggest distinct widening of economic and social inequality across neighborhood types, and should be monitored for further understanding in SDOH change over time. Comparative research of SDOH across additional time periods, as well as across global settings, may further discern the mechanisms of neighborhood impacts on health.