Journal
HEALTH & PLACE
Volume 27, Issue -, Pages 106-111Publisher
ELSEVIER SCI LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.healthplace.2014.02.008
Keywords
Causality; Environment design; Lifestyle risk reduction; Social and built environments; Twin studies
Categories
Funding
- National Institutes of Health [RC2 HL103416, R01 AG042176]
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No causal evidence is available to translate associations between neighborhood characteristics and health outcomes into beneficial changes to built environments. Observed associations may be causal or result from uncontrolled confounds related to family upbringing. Twin designs can help neighborhood effects studies overcome selection and reverse causation problems in specifying causal mechanisms. Beyond quantifying genetic effects (i.e., heritability coefficients), we provide examples of innovative measures and analytic methods that use twins as quasi-experimental controls for confounding by environmental effects. We conclude that collaboration among investigators from multiple fields can move the field forward by designing studies that step toward causation. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved,
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