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Peter Capone-Newton MD MPH
Current research delves into how eating, physical activity and health map onto personal mobility accross urban spaces and regions. He argues (below) that too many analyses of health resource access and health promotion take static proxies, rather than the full range of a person's mobile life ("activity space") as their geographic component.
Current positions: Preventive Medicine , National Research Service Award (NRSA) Fellow, UCLA Div. of GIM/HSR, Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA Dept. of Urban Planning (MA '08)
Introduced to us by Deborah Estrin.
Contact info:
phone: 310-980-3931
email: [email protected]
From our email exchange, since his google footprint is not very large:
Peter: Yes, I would certainly be interested in participating in the mobile health discussions. Especially how food resource environments and opportunities for physical activity relate to eating and activity behaviors across the entire activity space. Seems to me that CENS' research and applications are going play a large role in how we understand these relationships and help communities, individuals, and health care providers intervene to improve health.
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Activity space refers the entire geographic space that a person occupies over some period of time, usually with the idea that it encompasses most, if not all, of the important destinations a person visits. It can be viewed as representing a reasonable geographic area of physical accessibility for that person, and possibly a representation of someone's cognitive map of a particular place or group of places, which may also be important for how, when and why people choose particular destinations.
Much of the research on food resource environments has focused on residential location (or proxies) ignoring workplace, and I think importantly intermediate destinations and the paths between all these locations (i.e. activity spaces). Browsing around iftf.org it sounds like this concept fits with your "anytime, anyplace health" initiative, but I would be interested in hearing about it in more detail.
We already live in relatively poor health promotive environments (in my opinion), and I am fearful that instead of location based services and the technologies that surround them being put to good use (understanding the range of influence on behavior and how to intervene), we'll instead see $2 off your next McDonalds meal texted to your phone as you walk or drive by one of their locations.
My main research project right now is a secondary data analysis of the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey ("LA FANS") conducted by RAND and UCLA (http://www.lasurvey.rand.org/). Not primarily a health survey it did ask about chronic health conditions and collect self reported weight and height. It also asked about where participants shopped for food along with home, work, place of worship, doctor's office, and another location that was visited frequently in a typical week. Other researchers have looked at things like grocery store location and health outcomes, but not considered the set of destinations as a whole, which is what I am attempting to do. Of course, the set of destinations likely doesn't represent all the destinations a person may visit (thus not a true activity space) and can't determine paths, but those are some of the next steps in the research.