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Following the Great Depression and related home foreclosures, the federal government established new agencies to facilitate access to affordable home mortgages, including the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) and Federal Housing Administration (FHA). HOLC and FHA directed widespread neighborhood appraisals to determine investment risk, referred to as “redlining,” which took into account residents’ race. Redlining thereby contributed to segregation, disinvestment, and racial inequities in opportunities for homeownership and wealth accumulation. Recent research examines associations between historical redlining and subsequent environmental determinants of health and health-related outcomes. In this scoping review, we assess the extent of the current body of evidence, the range of outcomes studied, and key study characteristics, examining the direction and strength of the relationship between redlining, neighborhood environments, and health as well as different methodological approaches. Overall, studies nearly universally report evidence of an association between redlining and health-relevant outcomes, although heterogeneity in study design precludes direct comparison of results. We critically consider evidence regarding HOLC’s causality and offer a conceptual framework for the relationship between redlining and present-day health. Finally, we point to key directions for future research to improve and broaden understanding of redlining’s enduring impact and translate findings into public health and planning practice.

The links between housing and health are now known to be strong and multifaceted and to generally span across 4 key pillars: stability, affordability, quality and safety, and neighborhood opportunity. Housing disparities in the United States are tenaciously patterned along axes of social inequality and contribute to the burden related to persistently adverse health outcomes in affected groups. Appreciating the multidimensional relationship between housing and health is critical in moving the housing and health agenda forward to inspire greater equity. We assessed the current state of research on housing and health disparities, and we share recommendations for achieving opportunities for health equity centered on a comprehensive framing of housing. Despite the vastness of existing research, we must contextualize the housing and health disparities nexus in a broader web of interrelated variables emerging from the same roots of structural inequalities. There is more we can do to maximize the extent to which existing research furthers our understanding of housing’s relationship to health and potential related interventions; however, there are also several areas where new research is warranted.

In the early 1900s, Washington, D.C. contained many alleys in the interior of blocks inhabited by impoverished Black residents. Elite reformers engaged in an aggressive campaign to eliminate alleys, on the grounds of their purported unsanitary environment and high disease prevalence. In this paper, I combine quantitative, qualitative, and spatial sources to explore new perspectives on segregation, public health, and the racialized efforts of housing reformers during this period. I find that reformers overstated the horrors of conditions in alleys and their effects on residents’ health: poorer health among alley residents was in large part due to Black residents’ marginalization wherever they might live. Alleys’ status as racialized space, coupled with progressive paternalistic racism, facilitated the discursive construction of alleys as pathological “breeding grounds of disease.” Further, my findings shed new light on micro-configurations of segregation within racially mixed neighborhoods, as well as the social experience and meaning of such configurations. Far from indicating harmonious coexistence, the proximity of such alleys to white homes and institutions spurred elite Washingtonians’ self-interested fear of disease spreading beyond the alleys. Thus, this pattern of segregation helps explain the zeal of the campaign to eradicate alleys: as a means of achieving separation from undesired Black neighbors whom white reformers associated with contagion.

He et al explore the opportunities for connected devices to improve IEQ. Connected devices that make up \"smart homes\" are increasingly in high demand. Such connected devices may include home automation systems, consumer electronic devices, home appliances, security, and communications and entertainment. Traditionally, smart home systems employing these connected devices have aimed at energy efficiency, convenience, and security. Connected devices have easily automated settings and are remotely controllable, and such devices can easily concentrate energy usage at programmed times (e.g., when residents are home), and reduce it at other times, to achieve overall energy savings and improve convenience.

Nitrogen oxide (NO) species are markers for oxidative stress that may be pathogenic in acute lung injury (ALI). We tested two hypotheses in patients with ALI: (1) higher levels of urine NO would be associated with worse clinical outcomes, and (2) ventilation with lower VT would reduce urine NO as a result of less stretch injury. Urine NO levels were measured by chemiluminescence in 566 patients enrolled in the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome Network trial of 6 ml/kg versus 12 ml/kg VT ventilation. The data were expressed corrected and uncorrected for urine creatinine (Cr). Higher baseline levels of urine NO to Cr were associated with lower mortality (odds ratio, 0.43 per log(10) increase in the ratio), more ventilator-free days (mean increase, 1.9 d), and more organ-failure-free days (mean increase, 2.3 d) on multivariate analysis (p < 0.05 for all analyses). Similar results were obtained using urine NO alone. NO to Cr levels were higher on Day 3 in the 6 ml/kg than in the 12 ml/kg VT group (p = 0.04). Contrary to our hypothesis, higher urine NO was associated with improved outcomes in ALI at baseline and after treatment with the 6 ml/kg VT strategy. Higher endogenous NO may reflect less severe lung injury and better preservation of the pulmonary and systemic endothelium or may serve a protective function in patients with ALI.

The distal arm of the fourth (“dot”) chromosome of Drosophila melanogaster is unusual in that it exhibits an amalgamation of heterochromatic properties (e.g., dense packaging, late replication) and euchromatic properties (e.g., gene density similar to euchromatic domains, replication during polytenization). To examine the evolution of this unusual domain, we undertook a comparative study by generating high-quality sequence data and manually curating gene models for the dot chromosome of D. virilis (Tucson strain 15010–1051.88). Our analysis shows that the dot chromosomes of D. melanogaster and D. virilis have higher repeat density, larger gene size, lower codon bias, and a higher rate of gene rearrangement compared to a reference euchromatic domain. Analysis of eight “wanderer” genes (present in a euchromatic chromosome arm in one species and on the dot chromosome in the other) shows that their characteristics are similar to other genes in the same domain, which suggests that these characteristics are features of the domain and are not required for these genes to function. Comparison of this strain of D. virilis with the strain sequenced by the Drosophila 12 Genomes Consortium (Tucson strain 15010–1051.87) indicates that most genes on the dot are under weak purifying selection. Collectively, despite the heterochromatin-like properties of this domain, genes on the dot evolve to maintain function while being responsive to changes in their local environment.