How Do the Places We Live In Impact Our Health?: Challenges for, and Insights from, Communication Research

Abstract

Since the 1990s, there has been a resurgence of research on how the places we live in impact our health. I review this interdisciplinary body of work to identify the main factors that explain how residential communities influence individuals’ health. In doing so, I highlight unanswered questions which communication research can help address. After surveying communication research that addresses the larger issue of how the places in which we live influence our health, I articulate an integrative, multilevel, communication-centered theoretical framework to guide future work on neighborhood effects on health. Central to this framework is the notion that communication is an elementary social process through which neighborhood life is organized and transformed.