The benefits of green infrastructure have been verified at the site-level by many empirical studies. However, there is limited understanding of how local governments prepare and implement green infrastructure planning in practice. This study employs the content analysis method to examine the quality of local comprehensive plans regarding sustainable green infrastructure in 60 municipalities of the United States. The study uses regression analysis to explain the variance of plan quality. Study results indicate that key green infrastructure principles were not fully incorporated in the existing sampled plans, with average score of 19.6 out of 50. While plan quality scores were slightly higher in counties than in cities, both areas could significantly improve plan quality with detailed policies, action strategies, and implementation tactics for green infrastructure planning and management. Regression analysis further identified that planning capacities, as well as socio-economic characteristics of study area may impact overall plan quality. The findings of this study demonstrate the importance of incorporating detailed green infrastructure principles whenever local planners adopt or amend regional plans in order to improve plan quality and to support implementation.

Journal of Medical Internet Research - International Scientific Journal for Medical Research, Information and Communication on the Internet #Preprint #PeerReviewMe: Warning: This is a unreviewed preprint. Readers are warned that the document has not been peer-reviewed by expert/patient reviewers or an academic editor, may contain misleading claims, and is likely to undergo changes before final publication, if accepted, or may have been rejected/withdrawn. Readers with interest and expertise are encouraged to sign up as peer-reviewer, if the paper is within an open peer-review period. Please cite this preprint only for review purposes or for grant applications and CVs (if you are the author). Background: Low and Middle - income countries, such as Vietnam, are becoming more connected to the Internet. In addition, aside to the increased penetration and proliferation of Internet services, there has also been an eight times increment in the absolute number of mobile subscriptions in this period. There has been prior research looking at the attitudes of the general population towards smartphone and smartphone applications, as well as how smartphone have helped in terms of self-management of medical disorders Objective: With the increased penetration of Internet and smartphone devices in countries like Vietnam, it is the aim and objective of this current research article to look into the patterns of usage of smartphone applications as well as the preferences with regards to the functionalities of smartphone based applications. Methods: In order to achieve the study objectives, an online cross-sectional study was conducted from August 2015 to October 2015 in Vietnam. The Vietnam Authority of HIV/AIDS Control provided the ethical approval for the current research project. Response-driven sampling technique (RDS) was utilized in the recruitment of participants. The online questionnaire was programmed and implemented using Google Form. The web-based questionnaire that was conceptualized included the following parts: a) Baseline demographics; b) Smartphone usage pattern; c) Attitudes towards existing Smartphone applications and d) Preferences for a smartphone application. Chi-squared, t-test and ANOVA were used to explore the differences of satisfaction among characteristics. A p-value of less than 0.05 was set as the level of statistical significance. Results: A cumulative total of 380 individuals completed the web-based questionnaires, out of which 35.0% (n=133) were males. The vast majority of the participants were between the age groups of 18 to 22 years old, amounting to 77.6% of the entire sample. The vast majority of the participants (54.2%) rated themselves as being intermediate in terms of their proficiency with regards to their knowledge of utilization of a smartphone device. A similar percentage of the participants preferred to download applications for disease prevention (11.1%), as compared to applications for beauty counseling, nutrition counseling and disease treatment, with65.8% of the participants perceiving these applications to be very useful and 52.7% of the participants reported that they were very satisfied with the existing mobile health applications that were available. The vast majority of the participants would prefer applications that they could download and run directly from their smartphone. With regards to the contents of the applications, they would prefer there to be a balance between visuals as well as text-based information and participants also indicated that it is crucial for smartphone applications to have sharing functionalities, for them to share information onto their own personal social networks. Conclusions: An understanding of the attitudes and user preferences with regards to smartphone applications is essential in the conceptualization and development of appropriate smartphone interventions targeting youths and young adults.

The national economic reform movement that began in 1986 in Vietnam, known as Doi Moi, included efforts to connect Vietnam to the global production chain, thereby encouraging more foreign investment in the country. These reforms led to rapid economic growth and urbanization, positioning modern day Vietnam as one of the fastest growing economies in Southeast Asia. By 2018, the Vietnamese national government had designated 326 industrial zones, attracting a total of US$41.8 billion worth of domestic capital and US$145 billion in foreign capital. This study evaluates the factors associated with health outcomes for industrial zone workers in Hanoi, Vietnam. Analyzing 501 surveys of industrial worker households living in informal sector housing in industrial zones, we examine demographic, socio-environmental, housing, and occupational factors in shaping physical and mental health outcomes. This is one of the first studies of informal housing in industrial zones in Vietnam which provides an exploratory analysis of how living and working environments in industrial zones affects the health of workers. Gender is one indicator that stands out as a robust and significant predictor of health outcomes. We find that women fare worse on all four measures of health outcomes in our study.

The utilization of green infrastructure (GI) showed promising results as a flood mitigation strategy and a viable solution for building community resilience and achieving sustainability, especially in light of the challenges posed by climate change and increasing climate-related hazards. Meanwhile, it remains uncertain how local governments incorporated the key principles of GI into their planning and regulatory frameworks, particularly their comprehensive plans. This study aimed to fill in the gaps by evaluating U.S. Gulf Coast cities’ comprehensive plans regarding GI. Using the content analysis method, a sample of fifty-two city comprehensive plans was evaluated to determine how well local plans support GI and to examine the factors which influence the quality of local plans. Our results indicate that the sampled cities in the Gulf Coast region are likely to have low willingness to plan and implement GI. Moreover, results from statistical analysis implied that the sampled Gulf Coast cities are more likely to produce higher-quality plans in terms of GI when there are more opportunities for public participation and involvement in the planning process. Findings from our study can provide valuable information and direction for local authorities and planners to improve the performance of their comprehensive plans and support GI implementation in the future.