Date of Award

January 2025

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Public Health (MPH)

Department

School of Public Health

First Advisor

Daniel Carrión

Second Advisor

Jeannette Ickovics

Abstract

Background: Environmental gentrification is an emerging field seeking to understand the integrated effects of environmental improvements and gentrification. To date, we have a limited understanding of how to analyze environmental gentrification with intersecting health impacts. Our exploratory study investigates this relationship in New York City, where environmental improvement policies coincided with gentrification between 2000-2016. Methods: Using a census tract-level index of gentrification and corresponding environmental exposure data on air quality and vegetation, we conducted a clustering analysis to group and label census tracts according to environmental gentrification patterns. We then performed covariate-adjusted multivariable regression analyses to evaluate the association between cluster grouping and changes in prevalence for poor physical health, physical inactivity, poor mental health, current asthma, and routine health checkups from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention PLACES datasets for 2016 and 2023 (modeled from Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System data). We used a multiple imputation framework to propagate uncertainty in our health datasets, employing Rubin’s rules to pool regression results. Results: From our generalized additive models, we found that the “environmental gentrification” cluster was associated with a 0.51 percentage point decrease (95% CI: -1.01, -0.013) in physical inactivity and a 0.29 percentage point decrease (95% CI: -0.43, -0.15) in routine health checkups compared to the “no environmental gentrification” cluster. However, sensitivity analyses propagating uncertainty found null associations across pooled results. Conclusion: These findings provide important conceptual and methodological insights for this topic. The overall null associations may be due to the health of subgroups being differentially affected in opposite directions. Further research should expand our ecological analysis to investigate questions on subgroup characteristics and individual-level health equity, all of which have significant implications for environmental and housing policies.

Comments

This thesis is restricted to Yale network users only. It will be made publicly available on 06/16/2026

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