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Background: The paper examines the role of community-based participatory research (CBPR) within the context of social justice literature and practice. Methods: Two CBPR case studies addressing health inequities related to Type 2 Diabetes and Cardiovascular disease were selected from a national cross-site study assessing effective academic-community research partnerships. One CBPR partnership works with African Americans in rural Pemiscot County, Missouri and the other CBPR partnership works with African American and Latinos in urban South Bronx, New York City. Data collection included semi-structured key informant interviews and focus groups. Analysis focused on partnerships' context/ history and their use of multiple justice-oriented strategies to achieve systemic and policy changes in order to address social determinants of health in their communities. Results: Community context and history shaped each partnership's strategies to address social determinants. Four social justice approaches (identity/recognition, procedural, distributive, and structural justice) used by both partnerships were identified. These social justice approaches were employed to address underlying causes of inequitable distribution of resources and power structures, while remaining within a scientific research framework. Conclusion: CBPR can bridge the role of science with civic engagement and political participation, empowering community members to become political agents who integrate evidence into their social justice organizing strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the ways in which international historical archaeologists have explored the recent past, in an effort to inform and contribute to contemporary debates about social identity and social inclusion. It is argued that the archaeology of the mundane and everyday can contribute to contemporary culture by creating a sense of community and developing social cohesion. Emphasis is placed upon the archaeology of the recent urban past and case studies are presented from New York, Sydney and Cape Town. The paper concludes that the study of the materiality of urban social life offers a powerful research tool for social scientists, and that archaeologists and heritage interpreters should make greater use of this form of evidence within the context of early 21st-century urban regeneration schemes in the UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective Research has demonstrated that early intervention for children with autism can lead to improvements in core symptoms and enhance cognition, adaptive functioning, and quality of life. Unfortunately, most children are diagnosed too late to fully benefit from these services. Even in regions where diagnosis of autism can reliably be made, families often face additional barriers in accessing quality services. This article describes case examples in which Autism Speaks' Global Autism Public Health ( GAPH) Initiative partnered with communities to facilitate a process of multi-stakeholder collaboration to better understand local autism priorities related to awareness activities, early diagnosis, and developing autism surveillance systems. Method This paper utilised a nested case study to demonstrate how GAPH employs multi-stakeholder collaboration, community-based participatory research (CBPR) and consensus building to enhance early identification in low-resource settings. Each of these processes influenced different phases of the projects. Results In the first example, Autism Speaks adopted a CBPR approach to understand and address barriers to help-seeking behaviour among the Korean community affected by autism in New York City. The second example describes an international effort to develop open-source screening and diagnostic tools for autism that can be delivered by non-specialists in low-resource settings. The last example describes efforts to facilitate the development of an autism registry in Ireland to inform health policy decisions. Conclusions Collectively, these examples outline approaches the GAPH initiative uses to support global communities in working to overcome challenges related to the needs of individuals with autism and their families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1947, a smallpox outbreak occurred in New York City with a total of twelve cases and two deaths. In order to contain this outbreak, the New York City Department of Health launched a mass immunization campaign that over a period of some 60 days vaccinated 6.35 million people. This article examines in detail the epidemiology of this outbreak and the measures employed to contain it. In 1976, a swine influenza strain was isolated among a few recruits at a US Army training camp at Fort Dix, New Jersey. It was concluded at the time that this virus possibly represented a re-appearance of the 1918 influenza pandemic influenza strain. As a result, a mass national immunization program was launched by the federal government. From its inception, the program encountered a myriad of challenges ranging from doubts that it was even necessary to the development of Guillain-Barré paralysis among some vaccine recipients. This paper examines the planning for and implementation of the swine flu immunization program in New York City. It also compares it to the smallpox vaccination program of 1947. Despite equivalent financial and personnel resources, leadership and organizational skills, the 1976 program only immunized approximately a tenth of the number of New York City residents vaccinated in 1947. The reasons for these marked differences in outcomes are discussed in detail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information about public safety has become critical for government organizations, non-government organizations and citizens in general. It enables informed decisions to be made by individuals, as well as guides the creation of public policies. As with many domains, information on public safety is usually spread across different organizations, described in different formats and published at different levels of granularity and richness. In this paper, we present work done on a web-based portal that aggregates and displays public safety information for the city of Troy, New York. This portal shows how the use of semantic technologies facilitates the integration of multiple data sources with disparate characteristics. The portal demonstrates two types of functionality: First, it shows different examples of integration of public safety information through a variety of examples and visualizations. Second, it acts as a source of semantified data that third-party developers can use in their own applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the 33 years New York City schools were controlled primarily by community school boards, the city's mayors posited that greater mayoral influence was the cure for the ills afflicting the city's schools. This paper applies theories of policy change to the 30-year battle for control of New York's schools while highlighting the role of the city's teachers union and the state government in obstructing a mayoral takeover. Ultimately, a confluence of economic instability and political quid pro quo in 2002 created a milieu conducive to Mayor Michael Bloomberg winning control of the city's schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban stormwater runoff management systems are usually designed to meet performance standards based on historical climate data, which are assumed to be stationary. Based on the evidence from climate change impact studies, in the near future, stormwater management systems, within the built environment, may need to meet performance expectations under climatic conditions different from historical climate. Considering the impacts of climate change on rainfall intensities and stormwater runoff peak flow and volumes, and in turn the effectiveness of mitigation, practices for urban stormwater management are desirable. This paper presents the results of a climate change impact study on urban stormwater runoff in the Bronx River watershed, New York City. Considering the impacts of climate change on watershed runoff, the potential for low-impact development (LID) controls to mitigate the impacts was investigated. Stormwater runoff and LID controls were modeled using the U.S. EPA Storm Water Management Model version 5 (EPA SWMM5). The simulations were driven by historical precipitation modified to represent future projections using a change factor methodology based on precipitation from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5). Using the change factor method, historical precipitation was perturbed to obtain future data, based on three climate scenarios projecting maximum, mean, and minimum values for rainfall. Results of frequency analysis performed on the simulated peak flow rates, with different recurrence intervals, showed a noticeable increase in the frequency of occurrence of extreme storm events and their peak values, under future extreme climate conditions. An LID control scenario consisting of rainwater harvesting, porous pavement, and bioretention was designed and evaluated using the SWMM model. The results showed that, while average increase in historical annual runoff volume under climate change impacts was approximately 48%, the LID controls could provide an average reduction of 41% in annual runoff volume. Application of the LID controls also reduced peak flow rates by an average of 8 to 13%. LID implementation decreased watershed runoff corresponding to 2-year and 50-year return periods, by 28 and 14%, respectively. In conclusion, retrofits with LID controls may provide not only their inherent benefits (e.g., runoff volume and water quality), but also additional climate impact mitigation benefits for stormwater runoff. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]