Housing, Neighbourhoods and Health

Research on housing, neighborhoods, and health has been growing in the past several years, in part due to the interest in socioeconomic inequalities in health status observed in the affluent countries of the world. These inequalities are believed to be the result of socioeconomic differences in the quality of everyday living conditions, and attributes of housing and neighborhood are significant components of such conditions. Because housing and neighborhoods are multi-attribute phenomena; however, it is necessary to identify those attributes of housing and neighborhoods that have an influence on health, to guide both policy and research in the future. Six key dimensions of housing that are plausibly related to health are identified (biological/chemical/and physical factors; physical design; psychological dimensions; social benefits; financial dimensions; and locational dimensions). The latter of these, locational dimensions of housing, provides a segue into a discussion of the roots of neighborhoods and health research, as well as the attributes of neighborhoods believed to be related to health.