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Neighborhoods are one of the key determinants of health disparities among young people in the United States. While neighborhood deprivation can exacerbate health disparities, amenities such as quality parks and greenspace can support adolescent health. Existing conceptual frameworks of greening‐health largely focus on greenspace exposures, rather than greening interventions. In this paper, we develop and propose a Greening Theory of Change that explains how greening initiatives might affect adolescent health in deprived neighborhoods. The theory situates greening activities and possible mechanisms of change in the context of their ability to modify distal social determinants of health factors, stemming from macrostructural and historical processes that lead to resource inequalities, affecting both the social and built environment in which adolescents live and develop. The framework illustrates both short‐ and long‐term health, economic, and security effects of greening. We also describe how the theory informed the development of Project VITAL (Vacant lot Improvement to Transform Adolescent Lives) in Baltimore, MD, which aims to (1) build a citywide sharable database on vacant lot restoration activities, (2) evaluate the impact of greening initiatives on adolescent health outcomes, (3) conduct cost‐effectiveness analyses, and (4) develop best practices for greening programs for improved adolescent health. Highlights: Current greenspace‐health frameworks largely address greenspace instead of greening.Greening activities that engage social determinants of health might reduce adolescent health disparities.Our Greening Theory of Change informed study design for Project VITAL (Vacant lot Improvement to Transform Adolescent Lives). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Youth living in areas with high concentrations of vacant properties may be at particular risk for poor health outcomes given the associations between deteriorated vacant properties, poor mental health, and community violence. Vacant lot greening has emerged as a key strategy to mitigate the harms of deteriorated properties. Youth engagement in greening has documented benefits for youth, yet few organizations responsible for managing vacant properties currently engage youth. Further, few researchers have examined the best practices that organizations can employ to effectively engage youth in greening programs. The purpose of this study was to understand how high functioning vacant land management organizations with robust youth engagement capabilities engage youth in their greening work. Based on in‐depth interviews with staff from vacant land management organizations, we explored three research questions: (1) what are their identified best practices for youth engagement?; (2) what are the major challenges that impede their youth engagement work?; (3) what solutions are these organizations employing to address these challenges? Findings from this study emphasize the important themes of engaging youth in vacant lot greening in areas of planning, leadership, and decision‐making. Youth engagement in vacant lot greening may be a key mechanism for preventing violence through cultivating youth empowerment and development. Highlights: Youth engagement in greening may be a key mechanism for preventing violence.Valuing of youth driven spaces and cultivating youth leadership is supported by empowerment theory.Examples of how organizations engage youth to address concentrated vacancy and neighborhood decline are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many studies have demonstrated that collective efficacy is associated with positive health outcomes, lower crime, and violence in urban communities, and residents' emotional connection to their community. Remediation of blighted properties has been theoretically linked to increases in collective efficacy. The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of blighted property remediation on city non‐emergency 311 calls for public incivilities and deterioration, as potential markers of collective efficacy. We used a quasi‐experimental design to test whether 311 calls for service changed around remediated vacant lots in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States, many of which were left vacant after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. In six city neighborhoods eligible for blighted property remediation as part of a city program, 203 treated vacant lots were matched 1:3 without replacement to control lots that were eligible for but did not receive treatment. This yielded a total of 812 vacant lots partitioned within 48 months, or 38,976 lot‐months. Controls were in the same New Orleans neighborhoods as their matched treatment lots but were at least 250 feet away to minimize contamination. Overall difference‐in‐differences models detected postintervention declines in calls related to dumping and garbage, and slight but mostly non‐significant changes in calls between intervention and control lots in all but calls for dumping and vehicles. Blighted property remediation may have an impact on dumping and garbage, which is important. Despite being geographically specific, low‐cost and longitudinal, the nature of 311 calls and structural and historic factors at play in both the concentration of vacant properties in communities and residents' willingness to call must be considered. Further analyses of changes in 311 data and additional qualitative inquiry are warranted to more fully determine the utility of these data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Maintained green space in underserved urban neighborhoods may be an important environmental pathway to improving community health and safety, though effects may vary across population subgroups and by time of day. We examined survey responses from 442 participants (178 men and 264 women), living near vacant lots in a cluster-randomized controlled trial of a cleaning and greening intervention, on perceived safety during the day and at night. At the intervention sites after the intervention, only men reported feeling less unsafe during the day. Women reported more fear, and men reported less fear, after the intervention, although these results and tests for effect modification were not statistically significant. The clean-and-green intervention may have allayed fears for men during the day and supported their ease of movement throughout their neighborhoods. However, at night, it may have had the opposite effect on women. Though our study was under-powered, not designed to test associations stratified by gender, directions and magnitudes of associations differed substantially, indicating a need for further investigations into potential gender differences in the benefits of green space, to inform and better tailor interventions to improve perceived safety for all. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Illegal dumping is a public health burden for communities suffering from historical disinvestment. We conducted a mixed methods study to answer: 1) What are stakeholder perspectives on social/environmental determinants of illegal dumping? and 2) Do these or other characteristics predict known locations of illegal dumping? We employed an exploratory sequential design in which we collected and analyzed in-depth interviews (n=12) with service providers and residents and subsequently collected and analyzed data from multiple secondary sources. Stakeholders endorsed nine determinants of illegal dumping: Economic Decline, Scale of Vacancy, Lack of Monitoring, Poor Visibility, Physical Disorder, Illegal Activity, Norms, Accessibility, and Seclusion. Results demonstrate important community-identified, modifiable, social, and environmental characteristics related to illegal dumping with the potential to inform effective prevention. • Illegal dumping is a persistent, challenging public health burden for some U.S. communities. • Community stakeholders identified important contributors to illegal dumping. • Vacancy and related social and physical disorder are determinants of illegal dumping [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As vacant lot inventories expand in cities across the U.S., vacant land management organizations require strategies that optimize their functioning while ensuring community benefit. Resident engagement in programs to green vacant land may be one helpful strategy. While resident engagement is often required for vacant land management organizations, few researchers have examined how these organizations engage residents and the effect of these practices on their functioning. We hypothesized that more intensive engagement such as involving residents in planning and implementing greening would be more predictive of organizational functioning than lower level engagement. We analyzed data from a national survey of vacant land management organizations from 27 states (N = 68). We assessed three areas of organizational functioning including networking, programmatic, and resource capacity. We used hierarchical regression to test the additive effects of the resident engagement predictor variables including communication, input, involvement in planning, and involvement in implementation on organizational functioning. Less intensive engagement forms such as communicating and soliciting input were the most popular methods, but our final model indicated that the highest functioning organizations reported the most resident involvement in planning and implementing greening. Our results support policies and practices that expand resident involvement in greening. • Few vacant land management organizations involve residents in their greening work. • Higher organizational functioning was associated with more resident involvement. • The most popular resident engagement methods were communicating and obtaining input. • Vacant land management organizations may benefit by involving residents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Firearm violence is a complex issue and no single policy will resolve it. • By reducing more than 5% in incidents, vacant lot remediation plays a robust role in controlling firearm violence. • Cost savings from lowering firearm crimes can recover between 9% and 23% of greening expenses. Our objectives were to synthesize the early evidence regarding the effect of city-wide vacant-lot remediation programs on firearm violence and to determine what proportion of remediation costs are recovered from reducing firearm violence. Building on our scoping review, we conducted a meta-analysis of before-and-after studies with control groups. We then assumed three hypothetical cities of small, medium, and large populations and performed a probabilistic benefit-to-cost analysis over 30 years. Eight studies met our eligibility criteria. Interventions included mowing (n = 3), greening (n = 5), and gardening (n = 2), with two studies examining two different interventions. The pooled effect size did not show reduction in firearm violence by mowing vacant lots. However, greening and gardening interventions reduced firearm violence by 5.84% (95% CI: 7.89–3.79%) and 5.34% (95% CI: 7.74–2.93%) respectively. Greening programs were the most cost-effective intervention and cost savings from reducing firearm violence can recover an estimated 8.17% (95% CI: 8.11–8.23%), 10.20% (95% CI: 10.12–10.28%), and 21.06% (95% CI: 20.90–21.23%) of intervention expenses, equating to the net annual per capita costs of $64.53 (95% CI: $64.09–$64.96), $51.88 (95% CI: $51.53–$52.25), and $30.97 (95% CI: $30.73–$31.22) in the small, medium, and large cities respectively. While vacant lot remediation programs can play a robust role in controlling firearm violence at lower per capita costs than law enforcement polices, cost savings from reducing firearm crimes by itself does not recover all program costs. However, health and environmental benefits of such programs can offset the greening and maintenance costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]