Opioid use disorder and overdose deaths is a public health crisis in the United States, and there is increasing recognition that its etiology is rooted in part by social determinants such as poverty, isolation and social upheaval. Limiting research and policy interventions is the low temporal and spatial resolution of publicly available administrative data such as census data. We explore the use of municipal service requests (also known as “311” requests) as high resolution spatial and temporal indicators of neighborhood social distress and opioid misuse. We analyze the spatial associations between georeferenced opioid overdose event (OOE) data from emergency medical service responders and 311 service request data from the City of Columbus, OH, USA for the time period 2008–2017. We find 10 out of 21 types of 311 requests spatially associate with OOEs and also characterize neighborhoods with lower socio-economic status in the city, both consistently over time. We also demonstrate that the 311 indicators are capable of predicting OOE hotspots at the neighborhood-level: our results show code violation, public health, and street lighting were the top three accurate predictors with predictive accuracy as 0.92, 0.89 and 0.83, respectively. Since 311 requests are publicly available with high spatial and temporal resolution, they can be effective as opioid overdose surveillance indicators for basic research and applied policy.

This article develops an integrated methodology to investigate dominant trajectories of neighborhood change that are often confronted in urban studies. Currently, researchers are using k-means cluster analysis to establish diverse neighborhood typologies and principal component analysis (PCA) to identify socioeconomic interactions explaining the neighborhood typologies. Little attention has been given to longitudinal trajectories and dynamics of neighborhood evolution over a long period. Our new model adapts a newly developed dynamic sequential analysis (the weighted minimum edit distance algorithm) in big data analytics to sort and identify dominant trajectories of neighborhood change. Our model also innovatively synthesizes three statistical procedures—k-means, PCA, and analysis of variance—to derive the weight matrix, which naturally integrates the core characteristics of urban neighborhood changes into the sequential reordering. Using the census data in Metro Detroit over five census years (1970, 1980, 1990, 2000, and 2010), this model was tested to identify a unique city's demographic and socioeconomic transition pattern in the past forty years. This model successfully provided a thorough analysis of the neighborhood typologies and exhibited a much-enhanced performance in identifying long-term trajectories of urban evolution.

Long-term exposure to PM_2.5 is known to increase the risks for diabetes and obesity, but its effects on their coexistence, termed diabesity, remain uncertain. This study aimed to investigate the associations of long-term exposure to PM_2.5 and its chemical constituents with the risks for diabesity, diabetes, and obesity. This cross-sectional study used the baseline data of a multi-center cohort, consisting of three provincially representative cohorts comprising a total of 134,403 participants from the eastern (Fujian Province), central (Hubei Province), and western (Yunnan Province) regions of China. Obesity and diabetes, and diabesity were identified by a body mass index (BMI) ≥28 kg/m² and fasting plasma glucose (FPG) ≥126 mg/dL. The average concentrations of PM_2.5 and five chemical constituents (NO₃ ^-, SO₄ ^2-, NH₄ ⁺, organic matter, and black carbon) over participants' residence during the past three years were estimated using machine learning models. Logistic regression models with double robust estimators, Bayesian kernel machine regression, and weighted quantile sum regression were employed to estimate independent and joint effects of PM_2.5 chemical constituents on the risks for diabesity, diabetes, and obesity, as well as the differences from the effects on obesity. Stratified analyses were performed to examine effect modification of sociodemographic and lifestyle factors. There were 129,244 participants with a mean age of 54.1 ± 13.8 years included in the study. Each interquartile range increase in PM_2.5 concentration (8.53 μg/m³) was associated with an increased risk for diabesity (OR = 1.23 [1.17, 1.30]), diabetes only (OR = 1.16 [1.13, 1.19]), and obesity only (OR = 1.03 [1.00, 1.05]). Long-term exposure to each PM_2.5 chemical constituent was associated with an increased risk for diabesity, where organic matter exposure, with maximum weight (48%), was associated with a higher risk for diabesity (OR = 1.21 [1.16, 1.27]). Among those with obesity, black carbon contributed most (68%) to the joint effect of PM_2.5 chemical constituents on diabesity (OR = 1.16 [1.11, 1.22]). Physical activity reduced adverse effects of PM_2.5 on diabesity. Also, additive rather than multiplicative effects of obesity on the PM_2.5-diabetes association were observed. Long-term exposure to PM_2.5 and its chemical constituents was associated with an increased risk for diabesity, stronger than associations for diabetes and obesity alone. The main constituents associated with diabesity and obesity were black carbon and organic matter. National Natural Science Foundation of China (42271433, 723B2017), National Key R&D Program of China (2023YFC3604702), Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2042023kfyq04, 2042024kf1024), the Science and Technology Major Project of Tibetan Autonomous Region of China (XZ202201ZD0001G), Science and technology project of Tibet Autonomous Region（XZ202303ZY0007G), Key R&D Project of Sichuan Province (2023YFS0251), Renmin Hospital of Wuhan University (JCRCYG-2022-003), Jiangxi Provincial 03 Special Foundation and 5G Program (20224ABC03A05), Wuhan University Specific Fund for Major School-level Internationalization Initiatives (WHU-GJZDZX-PT07).