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The Unstable Public-Health Ecology of the New York Metropolitan Region: Implications for Accelerated National Spread of Emerging Infection

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  • Rodrick Wallace

    (The New York State Psychiatric Institute, 1051 Riverside Drive, New York, NY 10032, USA)

  • Kristin McCarthy

    (Department of Sociomedical Sciences, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, 722 West 168th Street, New York, NY 10032, USA)

Abstract

Empirical techniques adapted from ecosystem-resilience theory allow estimation of how public health and public order within the New York Metropolitan Region respond to perturbations driven by changes in policy or economic structure. This approach constitutes a rigorous methodology for health-impact assessment, providing a quantitative measure of the stability of the region. Contrary to entrenched cultural assumption, affluent suburban counties and impoverished central-city neighborhoods remain strongly linked through a probability-of-contact matrix well indexed by the daily journey to work. The public-health ecology of the New York Metropolitan Region is remarkably unstable, greatly amplifying perturbations through mechanisms analogous to positive feedback in mechanical systems, with the single greatest influence being the percentage of the population living in poverty. Given the New York region's overwhelming dominance of national patterns for the hierarchical diffusion of disease and disorder this result has significant policy implication. More explicitly, lowering the rate of poverty in and near New York City would markedly reduce the vulnerability of the United States to emerging infection.

Suggested Citation

  • Rodrick Wallace & Kristin McCarthy, 2007. "The Unstable Public-Health Ecology of the New York Metropolitan Region: Implications for Accelerated National Spread of Emerging Infection," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 39(5), pages 1181-1192, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:39:y:2007:i:5:p:1181-1192
    DOI: 10.1068/a38113
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Wallace, Rodrick, 1993. "Social disintegration and the spread of AIDS--II : Meltdown of sociogeographic structure in urban minority neighborhoods," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 37(7), pages 887-896, October.
    2. Deborah Wallace & Rodrick Wallace, 2000. "Life and Death in Upper Manhattan and the Bronx: Toward an Evolutionary Perspective on Catastrophic Social Change," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 32(7), pages 1245-1266, July.
    3. Wallace, Rodrick, 1990. "Urban desertification, public health and public order: 'Planned shrinkage', violent death, substance abuse and AIDS in the Bronx," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 31(7), pages 801-813, January.
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