Public health related tweets are difficult to identify in large conversational datasets like Twitter.com. Even more challenging is the visualization and analyses of the spatial patterns encoded in tweets. This study has the following objectives: how can topic modeling be used to identify relevant public health topics such as obesity on Twitter.com? What are the common obesity related themes? What is the spatial pattern of the themes? What are the research challenges of using large conversational datasets from social networking sites? Obesity is chosen as a test theme to demonstrate the effectiveness of topic modeling using Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) and spatial analysis using Geographic Information System (GIS). The dataset is constructed from tweets (originating from the United States) extracted from Twitter.com on obesity-related queries. Examples of such queries are ‘food deserts’, ‘fast food’, and ‘childhood obesity’. The tweets are also georeferenced and time stamped. Three cohesive and meaningful themes such as ‘childhood obesity and schools’, ‘obesity prevention’, and ‘obesity and food habits’ are extracted from the LDA model. The GIS analysis of the extracted themes show distinct spatial pattern between rural and urban areas, northern and southern states, and between coasts and inland states. Further, relating the themes with ancillary datasets such as US census and locations of fast food restaurants based upon the location of the tweets in a GIS environment opened new avenues for spatial analyses and mapping. Therefore the techniques used in this study provide a possible toolset for computational social scientists in general, and health researchers in specific, to better understand health problems from large conversational datasets.

The amendments to the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act of India in 2019 address non-binary persons’ constitutional rights, recognition of their gender identity, and non-discrimination laws across institutional spaces (for example, family, workplace, education, and healthcare). The Act discusses legal rights in isolation of praxis, structural support and, more importantly, lacks guidelines needed to substantively access rights. Such a disconnection relegates human rights to merely legal changes with limited practice. In this article, we discuss the achievements and failures of the act from the perspective of a transgender community in India, and the impact it has had on their lives from its formulation in 2014. Although non-binary communities are recognized, they face severe abuse and discrimination. We analyse accounts of 15 transgender persons’ lived experiences and challenges they faced in claiming their rights in Kolkata, a metropolis in eastern India. We used the framework of substantive access to rights, that is, the actual ability to practice and access documented rights, to critically discuss our findings across family, work, education, and healthcare spaces, often showing the gaps between achieved legal status, and the practical realities on the ground. We provide several recommendations to bridge these gaps—improving educational equity for non-binary people, including transgender specific training for healthcare providers and, more importantly, increasing the adequate representation of non-binary people in the positions of negotiation. The road to claiming social and economic rights following legal rights for non-binary gender communities cannot be achieved without overcoming their erasure within families and hypervisibility in public spaces.

Public health researchers are increasingly interested in assessing the impact of neighborhood environment on physical activities and chronic health issues among humans. Walkable streets and proximity to green space have long been believed to promote active lifestyles in cities, which contribute to positive health outcomes among residents. Traditionally, urban environmental metrics were calculated at the area level to describe the physical environment of neighborhoods. However, considering the fact that streets are the basic unit for human activities in cities, it is important to understand how the streetscape environment can influence human health conditions. In this study, we investigated the influence of street greenery and walkability on body mass index in Cleveland, Ohio, USA. Different from the area level and overhead view greenery metrics, we used the green view index calculated from the Google Street View to represent the amount of street greenery. The Walk Score was used to indicate the walkability of neighborhoods also at the street level. Statistical analysis results show that the Walk Score has a more significant association with decreased BMI for males than females and the street greenery has a more significant association with decreased BMI for females than males in Cleveland, Ohio. The results of this study would provide a reference for designing gender-specific healthy cities.