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Background Little is known on how greenspace redevelopment—creating or improving existing parks and trails—targeted for low-income and/or majority Black neighborhoods could amplify existing social environmental stressors, increase residents’ susceptibility to displacement, and impact their sleep quality. Objective To examine the relationship between social environmental stressors associated with displacement and sleep quality among Black adults. Methods Linear regression models were employed on survey data to investigate the association between social environmental stressors, independently and combined, on sleep quality among Black adults residing in block groups targeted for greenspace redevelopment (i.e., exposed) and matched with block groups that were not (i.e., unexposed). Results The independent associations between everyday discrimination, heightened vigilance, housing unaffordability, and subjective sleep quality were not modified by greenspace redevelopment, controlling for other factors. The association between financial strain and subjective sleep quality was different for exposed and unexposed participants with exposed participants having a poorer sleep quality. The combined model revealed that the association between financial strain and sleep quality persisted. However, for different financial strain categories exposed participants slept poorer and/or better than unexposed participants. Significance Our findings suggest a nuanced relationship between social environmental stressors, pressure of displacement related to greenspace redevelopment, and sleep quality among Black adults.

This case study presents an evaluation framework to assess the facilitating and constraining factors that influenced the emergency response, operation, and management of a Special Needs Shelter Program in Monroe County, Florida during Hurricane Irma in 2017. A qualitative analysis of key documents and discussions with agencies directly involved in the Monroe County Special Needs Shelter Program was used to assess four major emergency response processes: notifications and communications, evacuation and transportation, sheltering, and interagency coordination. A critical cross-cutting theme emerged, which was a lack of a common definition for populations with "special needs" across different agencies resulting in uncertainties about who should be admitted to the Special Needs Shelter and have access to their services. We generate public health and emergency management lessons to inform future adaptation, preparedness, and response plans to extreme weather events for populations with access and functional needs in Monroe County and Florida's coastal communities more broadly.

Although low neighborhood social cohesion (nSC) has been linked with poor sleep, studies of racially/ethnically diverse participants using multiple sleep dimensions remain sparse. Using National Health Interview Survey data, we examined overall, age, sex/gender, and racial/ethnic-specific associations between nSC and sleep health among 167,153 adults. Self-reported nSC was categorized into low, medium, and high. Very short sleep duration was defined as &lt, 6 hours, short as &lt, 7 h, recommended as 7&ndash, 9 h, and long as &ge, 9 h. Sleep disturbances were assessed based on trouble falling and staying asleep, waking up feeling unrested, and using sleep medication (all &ge, 3 days/times in the previous week). Adjusting for sociodemographics and other confounders, we used Poisson regression with robust variance to estimate prevalence ratios (PRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for sleep dimensions by low and medium vs. high nSC. The mean age of the sample was 47 &plusmn, 0.1 years, 52% of those included were women, and 69% were Non-Hispanic (NH)-White. Low vs. high nSC was associated with a higher prevalence of very short sleep (PR = 1.29, (95% CI = 1.23&ndash, 1.36)). After adjustment, low vs. high nSC was associated with very short sleep duration among NH-White (PR = 1.34 (95% CI = 1.26&ndash, 1.43)) and NH-Black (PR = 1.14 (95% CI = 1.02&ndash, 1.28)) adults. Low nSC was associated with shorter sleep duration and sleep disturbances.

Natural burial (NB) is an ecologically-sensitive alternative to traditional burial in a lawn-park cemetery. NB can reduce or eliminate the use of resources and toxic byproducts, but NB may also be more environmentally sustainable due to its potential as a land conservation tool. We address the research question ‘How is natural burial being used as a tool for land conservation?’ by assessing secondary data of NB trends in the US, creating a verified inventory of NB grounds, evaluating three NB models being used to conserve land, and assessing the regulatory barriers to NB. Our study reveals there are currently 162 geographically dispersed NB providers in the US and few legal restrictions to NB. The three prototype cases—representing restored agricultural land, land on the urban fringe in threat of development, and forested land adjacent to existing conserved public land—provide planners with promising models from which context-specific solutions can be adopted.