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Housing-mobility programs and housing choice vouchers provide low-income families with a potentially transformative opportunity to move to low-poverty neighborhoods. However, families often face barriers to attaining upward residential mobility; poor health may be one important barrier, although few studies have examined this hypothesis. We used the experimental Moving to Opportunity for Fair Housing Demonstration Project (MTO) Study, constructed residential trajectories, and linked neighborhood opportunity measures to over 14,000 addresses of 3526 families across 7 years. We used latent growth curve longitudinal models to test how baseline health modified effects of MTO housing voucher treatment on neighborhood opportunity trajectories. Results show that poor baseline health adversely influenced how the voucher induced upward mobility. Voucher receipt strongly promoted residential mobility if families were healthy; moreover, the low-poverty neighborhood voucher plus counseling treatment promoted higher-opportunity neighborhood attainment than controls, regardless of the baseline health of the family. However, families with health vulnerabilities did not retain the same initial neighborhood gains conferred by the housing choice voucher (HCV) treatment as families without health vulnerabilities. These results suggest that housing counseling may be one necessary element to expand neighborhood choice into higher-opportunity neighborhoods for families with health challenges. Providing housing vouchers alone is insufficient to promote low-income-family high-opportunity moves, for families who have disabilities or special needs. The implications of these results point to scaling up housing-mobility programs, to provide tailored support for low-income families to use HCVs to make high-opportunity moves, which is particularly necessary for families with health challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Menopause marks the end of female reproductive capacity. It is defined as the point after cessation of the menstrual cycle for 12 months (Nursat et al., 2008). Awareness about menopause has increased over the last decade, yet studies have shown that women still lack knowledge regarding the subject. Likewise, awareness of women between the age of 40–65 on the potential role of physical activity prior to and during menopause in women is unclear. Women (n = 162) aged 40–65 years completed a survey rating their knowledge, answered fact-based questions and reported their experiences of menopause. Their levels of, and beliefs on, the role physical activity on symptoms and menopause associated disease risk were also collected. Women reported their confidence in their current knowledge level at 67% reflecting 37% higher rating than an estimate of their knowledge 10 years ago. Their factual knowledge score was 56%. Knowledge was primarily gained through friends and family and almost half (46%) had not spoken to a healthcare professional. Frustration was expressed with lack of knowledge and support of healthcare and others. Women using HRT (44%) had mixed attitudes towards its role. A high proportion were active and felt that physical activity can help manage symptoms and impact long-term health consequences of menopause. Menopause education strategies for women, healthcare professionals and others need to be improved. Lack of education may be causing women to struggle and feel negatively towards this life stage. Physical activity was viewed positively for the symptoms and a treatment during menopause and long-term health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the importance of nature exposure in the modern era and the potential health benefits associated with it. It acknowledges the shift from a natural, outdoor lifestyle to one dominated by urban environments, which has limited access to nature, particularly for certain socioeconomic and racial/ethnic groups. The article emphasizes the negative consequences of reduced nature exposure on mental and physical health. It introduces two new technologies, NatureScoreTM and NatureDoseTM, which aim to quantify and promote nature exposure for health promotion purposes. NatureScoreTM is a dataset and tool that estimates the amount and quality of nature at any location, while NatureDoseTM is a mobile app that tracks an individual's daily or weekly exposure to nature. These technologies provide convenient and accurate ways to measure nature exposure and may help researchers understand the benefits of nature exposure and promote its use for health promotion. NatureDoseTM is a smartphone app that passively monitors a person's time spent indoors, outdoors, and outdoors in nature. The app uses the smartphone's sensors, geolocation, and a dataset called NatureScoreTM to determine the user's location and the amount of nature within a 1-km buffer. It assigns full nature exposure time credit when a user is outdoors in a designated natural area, and partial credit when they are outdoors but not in a natural area. The app also allows users to set a weekly goal for time spent outdoors in nature and tracks their progress. It has potential uses for clinicians, researchers, and policymakers, such as setting [Extracted from the article]