The burden of obesity-related illness, which disproportionately affects low income households and historically disadvantaged racial and ethnic groups, is a leading public health issue in the United States. In addition, previous research has documented differences in eating behavior and dietary intake between racial and ethnic groups, as well as between urban and rural residents. The coexistence of diet-related disparities and diet-related health conditions has therefore become a major focus of research and policy. Researchers have hypothesized that differences in eating behavior originate from differing levels of access to and affordability of healthy food options, such as fresh fruits and vegetables. Therefore, this dissertation examines the affordability of fresh produce in the Brazos Valley of Texas. This study uses information on produce prices collected by taking a census of food stores in a large regional area through the method ground-truthing. These are combined with responses to a contemporaneous health assessment survey. Key innovations include the construction of price indices based on economic theory, testing the robustness of results to different methods of price imputation, and employing spatial econometric techniques. In the first part of the analysis, I evaluate the socioeconomic and geographical factors associated with the affordability of fresh fruits and vegetables. The results based on Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression show that except housing values (as median value of owner-occupied units) and store type, most factors do not have significant effects on the prices for these food items. In addition, the sizes and signs of the coefficients vary greatly across items. We found that consumers who pay higher premiums for fresh produce reside in rural areas and high proportion of minorities neighborhoods. We then assess how our results are influenced by different imputation methods to account for missing prices. The results reveal that the impacts of the factors used are similar regardless of the imputation methods. Finally we investigate the presence of spatial relationships between prices at particular stores and competing stores in the neighborhoods. The spatial estimation results based on Maximum Likelihood (ML) indicate a weak spatial correlation between the prices at stores located near each others in the neighborhoods. Stores selling vegetables display a certain level of spatial autocorrelation between the prices at a particular store and its neighboring competitors. Stores selling fruits do not present such relations in the prices.

No description available.

No description available.

Over the last two decades, biophilic design and green architecture have been gaining moremomentum throughout the world, to combat climate change and promote sustainability.Biophilic design states that humans have an innate connection with nature, and thatconnection invokes human well-being, productivity, coexistence with nature, andbiodiversity. It is estimated that by 2050, over 65% of people will live in urban settings, which should incentivize biophilic design oriented urban planning. Introducing biophilic design aspects in neighbourhoods can create environments for betterconnection between residents, and with nature. This research evaluates the affordability ofbiophilic designed apartments and if there is a correlation between the biophilic designintensity and the price tag. Research also aims to review the importance and barriers of biophilic design apartments among urban oriented academics and architects using semi-structured interviews. This paper intends to fill a research gap and provide a comprehensive understanding of affordability of biophilic designed apartments, in varying geographicalareas. The analysis was done in three steps of mixed methodology using a housing affordabilityindex, a biophilic pattern score and interviews. The findings highlight the crisis of housingunaffordability, specifically proving biophilic design apartments are severely unaffordableusing quantitative research. The study also established neutral correlation between thebiophilic patterns intensity and apartment affordability index of the selected buildingsamples. Thus, there is further research needed to find the causes of housing unaffordability,which directly equates to the health and quality of people. The research gave insights onreasoning behind low prevalence of biophilic design apartments. To summarise, the studyhighlights an important issue of unaffordability that needs to be addressed by stakeholderslike the government, planning committee, architects, and real estate developers.

Launch vehicle development programs have experienced significant difficulties in achieving first flight. Optimism during the initiation of these complex programs, coupled with the innovative nature of the technologies they employ, has resulted in a long list of programs unable to remain within the national means. A recent example of this challenge is the Constellation program which was canceled in 2011 due to excessive cost overruns and schedule slippage. The budgetary constraints currently placed on NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) highlights the need for a greater emphasis on affordability. Where affordability is defined in this research as the ability to remain under the mandated funding curve for all points in a system's life cycle while simultaneously meeting schedule goals given that performance requirements are met. The proposed research aims to address the gap between current practices and an affordability-centric design approach by capturing manufacturing technology effects on the affordability of the baseline vehicle concept. Historically, cost overruns and schedule slippages escalate once production begins and are only truly realized at the first launch of a system. These trends, based upon systems which leveraged traditional materials and processes, suggest a shortcoming in the ability of current practices to assess manufacturing implications during the early design phases. The advent of advanced materials and the new process required to fabricate parts from them, further challenges these practices, and threaten to exacerbate the already excessive overruns experience once production begins. Manufacturing technologies, such as composite materials, automated fabrication processes, and the use of stiffener concepts, can no longer be considered independently. This observation leads to the conclusion that improvements in vehicle affordability can only be realized by bringing manufacturing information forward into the Conceptual Design phase. The goal of this research is to support the development of affordable launch vehicles by quantitatively capturing the effects of manufacturing technology selection during Conceptual Design. A manufacturing influenced design methodology is combined with established techniques of time-phasing and risk propagation to evaluate the expected affordability of a launch vehicle baseline concept. The method is benchmarked against expected performance and affordability trends established in literature. The experiments used to build this methodology provide interesting insight into the excess risk typically carried into Preliminary Design due to a lack of the temporal nature of cost. Fundamental implications include the notion that the most expensive candidate (i.e. the highest total cost) does not correspond to the candidate with the highest annual cost insurance. Furthermore, the assessment of risk — within the traditional total cost domain — by overlaying vertical constraints onto uncertainty distributions results in the inclusion of many unaffordable candidates. The final chapter of this thesis applies the method to a relevant launch vehicle, the Exploration Upper Stage (EUS) of the SLS Block IB, which is currently in its Conceptual Design phase. This chapter compares two viable candidate manufacturing technologies based on affordability criteria established herein. The application of this methodology provides the decision maker with a significant amount of information previously unavailable and affords her additional degrees of freedom regarding appropriate Design, Development, Testing, Evaluation, and Production (DDTE&P) planning. This will ultimately enable the selection of an affordable vehicle baseline which will be robust to uncertainty in congress-appropriated funding and thus circumvent risks associated with government program cancellation.

Equitable access to essential medicines is a major challenge for policy-makers world-wide, including Central and Eastern European countries. This study analyses whether socioeconomic determinants influence the use of prescribed and non-prescribed medicines in eight Central and Eastern European countries (Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia). Further, the study discusses observed (in)equalities in medicine use in the context of the pharmaceutical policy framework and the implementation in these countries. The study is based on cross-sectional data from the first wave of the European Health Interview Survey (2007-2009). Multivariate logistic regression analyses were carried out to determine the association between socioeconomic status and medicine use (prescribed and non-prescribed medicines). This was supplemented by a pharmaceutical policy analysis based on indicators in four policy dimensions (sustainable funding, affordability, availability and accessibility, and rational selection and use of medicines). Overall, the analysis showed a gradient favouring individuals from higher socioeconomic groups in the consumption of non-prescribed medicines in the eight surveyed countries, and for prescribed medicines in three countries (Latvia, Poland, Romania). The pharmaceutical systems in the eight countries were, to varying degrees, characterized by a lack of (public) funding, thus resulting in high and growing shares of private financing (including co-payments for prescribed medicines), inefficiencies in the selection of medicines into reimbursement and limitations in medicines availability. Pharmaceutical policies aiming at reducing inequalities in medicine use require not only a consideration of the role of co-payments and other private expenditure but also adequate investment in medicines and transparent and clear processes regarding the inclusion of medicines into reimbursement. (authors' abstract)

In Ghana, over 70% of urban dwellers do not have private sanitation facilities in their home and rely instead on an informal network of shared toilets. The predominance of shared toilets in Ghana is the result of unplanned urbanization, specific features of housing, socio-economic characteristics of the population and political orientations. Shared sanitation includes a whole range of models from large toilets blocks owned by the municipality to toilet cubicles shared by tenants of the same house. Shared toilets are not considered as improved sanitation facilities as access for vulnerable groups, maintenance, hygiene, privacy and safety of the users are not always guaranteed. However, for millions of urban dwellers, shared toilets are the only alternative to open defecation and are used daily. Some of these facilities, through better management models and through better standards, provide services appreciated by the users. The aim of this research is to determine which models of shared facilities are acceptable sanitation solutions for urban dwellers, depending on the local circumstances. To do so, the research framework compares the perspectives of dwellers and sanitation providers, acknowledges the characteristics of the specific urban context and considers the relationships between the key stakeholders. In a fast growing city in Ghana, Ashaiman, 432 house units representing over 8000 residents were surveyed, over 40 participatory exercises and 38 interviews with a range of stakeholders were conducted. This research concludes on four main points. Firstly, many apparently similar areas are actually not uniform; the heterogeneity of urban planning and housing influences any past and future sanitation developments. Urban planners need to integrate sanitation in their future decisions but base these on appropriate solutions. The second finding is that some models of shared sanitation can be considered as adequate given the particular context and its likely evolution. The different models have legitimacy at different stages of urban development and their successful selection depends on the quality of the contextual understanding. Thirdly, cleanliness and affordability are key determinants when the dwellers select shared toilets. Given the toilet options available, these determinants are often mutually exclusive and are a dilemma for the users. This dilemmas result in variations in use of shared toilets within a neighbourhood, and at intra household and individual levels. The final point is that choice and then acceptability of a facility depends on the options available. Therefore deciding which facilities are best adapted to the local context should be in the hands of both local providers and dwellers, supported by other local stakeholders who enable relationships through adapted policies and facilitated dialogues.

This thesis examines issues of affordability and gentrification in neighborhoods around the Atlanta BeltLine. The BeltLine is a Transit Oriented Development project that is an adaptive reuse of an old freight rail corridor circling the city of Atlanta. The rapid new development occurring along the BeltLine is gentrifying neighborhoods and displacing communities. This thesis examines past urban redevelopment projects in Atlanta to see what the affects were on marginalized communities, and how the BeltLine is either similar or different to past development initiatives.

Multiple housing affordability indexes are used to measure and assess housing affordability. Each index has its own definition of affordability, causing varying viewpoints on what is to be considered affordable or unaffordable. Four indexes were used in this study: two from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), one from the National Association of Realtors (NAR), and the last from the National Low Income Housing Coalition. The indexes were applied to Census data to assess the housing affordability situation of both homeowners and renters in the census tracts of Cache County, Utah. The measures together show distinct differences in the housing markets throughout the county. The study provides implications for housing counselors, educators, lenders, and policy makers, and provides suggestions for preventing housing crisis, including the benefits of the residual income approach for determining housing affordability

This research provides an analysis of the disparate notions and ideas, to form an overview of the possible trends in residential property for the Victorian coastal areas of the Surf Coast and the Bellarine Peninsula. It examines the interaction of the consumers, space producers and infrastructure providers as they are influenced by the three key determinants of the market, the demographic factors, economic conditions and statutory factors. While examining the patterns of urban development on coastal Victoria over the next 20 years, the research also investigates the validity of myths that have emerged concerning the Sea Change experience, the investment market in coastal areas and the adequacy of the relevant infrastructure. The qualitative data used in this research comes from both primary and secondary sources. The primary qualitative and quantitative data was developed on the basis of the responses to a mail out questionnaire to residents from seven towns on the Bellarine Peninsula and the Surf Coast and from a number of interviews with local property experts from these areas. The secondary qualitative and quantitative data came from the results of various government surveys, demographers, the press and the census. The main thrust of this research is to answer the question