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Associations Between Micro-neighborhood Greening and Child Maltreatment

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International Journal on Child Maltreatment: Research, Policy and Practice Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

We conducted a longitudinal observational study of 9873 micro-neighborhoods in a Midwestern city from 2015 to 2018 and estimated multilevel zero-inflated negative binomial models to evaluate if seasonal lawn maintenance of vacant properties was associated with a reduction in microneighborhoods’ annual summer maltreatment rates. We found a between-micro-neighborhood effect of maintenance whereby micro-neighborhoods where the entire area was maintained for the full duration of all summers had a maltreatment rate 0.43 (95% CI 0.25, 0.73) times that of micro-neighborhoods that received no maintenance. We also found a within-micro-neighborhood effect, whereby when a given micro-neighborhood had the entire area maintained the full duration of a summer, it was expected to have a maltreatment rate 0.43 (95% CI 0.19, 0.97) times that of when the same micro-neighborhood had no area maintained. Future cluster-randomized controlled trials are needed to determine if this association is causal.

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Funding

This project was supported by a grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (3U01CE002698-05S1).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Social Work, Wayne State University, 5447 Woodward Ave, Detroit, MI, 48202, USA

    Rebeccah L. Sokol

  2. Department of Health Behavior and Health Education, School of Public Health, University of Michigan, 1415 Washington Heights, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109, USA

    Gregory Bushman, Catherine H. Gong, Laney Rupp & Marc A. Zimmerman

  3. Michigan Youth Violence Prevention Center, School of Public Health, University of Michigan, 1415 Washington Heights, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109, USA

    Catherine H. Gong, Laney Rupp & Marc A. Zimmerman

  4. University of Michigan Injury Prevention Center, 2800 Plymouth Road, NCRC 10-G080, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109, USA

    Laney Rupp & Marc A. Zimmerman

  5. School of Social Work, University of Michigan, 1080 S University Ave, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109, USA

    Joseph P. Ryan

Authors
  1. Rebeccah L. Sokol
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  2. Gregory Bushman
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  3. Catherine H. Gong
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  4. Laney Rupp
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  5. Joseph P. Ryan
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  6. Marc A. Zimmerman
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Correspondence to Rebeccah L. Sokol.

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Sokol, R.L., Bushman, G., Gong, C.H. et al. Associations Between Micro-neighborhood Greening and Child Maltreatment. Int. Journal on Child Malt. 5, 281–293 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42448-021-00109-2

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