
John R WeeksSan Diego State University | SDSU · Department of Geography
John R Weeks
PhD
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Publications (129)
My background as a demographer blended very well with Art Getis’s knowledge of and research in geography. He taught me what geography is and he taught me how to analyze demographic data from a spatial perspective, especially in the use of the GIS approaches he was instrumental in developing. I am like a lot of people who owe a huge debt to Professo...
Urban expansion is a form of land cover and land use change (LCLUC) that occurs globally, and population growth can be a driver of and be driven by LCLUC. Determining the cause–effect relationship is challenging because the temporal resolution of population data is limited by decadal censuses for most countries. The purpose of this study is to expl...
Background:
Niger has the highest prevalence of child marriage in the world. While child marriage in Niger is clearly normative in the sense that it is commonly practiced, the social and contextual factors that contribute to it are still unclear.
Methods:
Here, we tested the importance of village-level factors as predictors of young age at marri...
Background:
Adolescent pregnancy and childbirth are common throughout Central America. While gendered beliefs promoting motherhood are a known risk factor, their association with adolescent childbirth within the social networks of Central American communities is unknown.
Methods:
This was a cross-sectional study looking at adolescent childbirth...
OBJECTIVE The primary objectives of this study are to examine intra-urban spatial variation in the rates of under-five-years-old child mortality (5q0) in Accra in 2000 and 2010, as well as between those two dates, and to evaluate potential connections between the physical characteristics of urban neighborhoods and their levels of child mortality. M...
Rapid population and economic growth quickly degrade and deplete forest resources in many developing countries, even within protected areas. Monitoring forest cover change is critical for assessing ecosystem changes and targeting conservation efforts. Yet the most biodiverse forests on the planet are also the most difficult to monitor remotely due...
Adolescent childbearing rates are higher in Central America than almost anywhere else on the planet. However, in this research we discovered that adolescent childbearing exhibits variability from one village to another, offering the possibility that we might discover factors associated with this spatial variability that can help us understand key f...
Sub-Saharan Africa is among the world’s fastest urbanizing regions. However, there is a lack of reliable data to estimate the amount and rates of urban expansion on the African continent. The objective of this study is to improve our understanding of urbanization in sub-Saharan Africa. Remote sensing methods and spatial metrics are combined to comp...
Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest levels of fertility in the world, despite rapid urban growth in most nations of the region. While there are many reasons for the fact that fertility decline is slow in Africa, we hypothesize that the relationship between fertility and urbanization is obscured by the fact that urbanization takes place along a gradi...
We first describe the macrolevel relationships between population growth (based on decadal census data) and land-cover and land-use change (data derived primarily from Landsat multispectral satellite data) in Ghana. We then focus on the southern part of the country to analyze the interaction of demographic and health changes with shifts occurring i...
Obesity is a growing public health concern in both developed and developing countries, creating acute challenges in places with scant resources. In Ghana, obesity rates have risen substantially in recent decades, a trend particularly noted in urban areas. However, high levels of migration and urbanization indicate a situation that is more complex t...
In Sub-Saharan Africa rapid urban growth combined with rising poverty is creating diverse urban environments, the nature of which are not adequately captured by a simple urban-rural dichotomy. This paper proposes an alternative classification scheme for urban mapping based on a gradient approach for the southern portion of the West African country...
Despite growing research into the socio-economic aspects of vulnerability
[1]
–
[4]
, relatively little work has linked population dynamics with climate change beyond the complex relationship between migration and climate change
[5]
. It is likely, however, that most people experience climate change
in situ
, so understanding the role of pop...
We analyze amounts and spatial patterns of land cover and land use change (LCLUC) and particularly change to Built for four contiguous regions of southern Ghana between 2000 and 2010. Our objective is to understand the degree of urban expansion relative to urban densification during this time frame, to understand the relationship between population...
Rates of population growth and urbanization currently taking place in sub-Saharan Africa are and will be the highest in the world, providing impetus for remote-sensing-based monitoring of land cover and land use change (LCLUC). The objective of this study is to assess the utility of using segmentation and classification information derived from an...
Rural to urban migration and relatively high fertility rates have influenced rapid land cover and land use change (LCLUC) in southern Ghana, which warrants more frequent monitoring. We develop and test approaches for semiautomatically and more frequently identifying the type and date of LCLUC from time series of Landsat ETM+ imagery from 2000 to 20...
Human migration has been identified as a potential factor for increased Chagas disease risk and has transformed the disease from a Latin American problem to a global one. We conducted a systematic review of the scientific literature between 2004-2014 in order to: summarize current seroprevalence estimates of Chagas disease among Latin American migr...
Demography is, by its very nature, concerned with people in places, although the history of the discipline over time reveals a struggle between the desire to find universal principles (such as the original model of the demographic transition) and the recognition that spatial variation is itself a universal principle. Demography is in the process of...
Despite growing research into the socioeconomic aspects of vulnerability [1-3], relatively little work has linked population dynamics with climate change. Understanding the role of population dynamics remains critical. How a given number of people, in a given location and with varying population characteristics may exacerbate or mitigate the impact...
Social and environmental factors are increasingly recognized for their ability to influence health outcomes at both individual and neighborhood scales in the developing urban world. Yet issues of spatial heterogeneity in these complex environments may obscure unique elements of neighborhood life that may be protective or harmful to human health. Re...
Abstract—In order to map the spatial extent and location of
slum settlements multiple methodologies have been devised
including remote sensing based methods and field based methods
using surveys and census data. In this study we utilize spatial,
structural, and contextual features (e.g., PanTex, Histogram of
Oriented Gradients, Line Support Regions...
In the South, as in much of the United States, the demographic train has left the station. For over a decade the region has been attractive to migrants leaving either a Latin American country or areas of the United States with weaker economies and/or higher costs of living. Our projections going out to 2040 show continued growth under virtually all...
The objectives are to (1) quantify, map, and analyze vegetation cover distributions and changes across Accra, Ghana, for 2002 and 2010; and (2) examine the statistical relationship between vegetation cover and a housing quality index (HQI) for 2000 at the neighborhood level. Pixel-level vegetation cover maps derived using threshold classification o...
Rapid population growth in developing cities often outpaces improvements to drinking water supplies, and sub-Saharan Africa as a region has the highest percentage of urban population without piped water access, a figure that continues to grow. Accra, Ghana, implements a rationing system to distribute limited piped water resources within the city, a...
Neighborhood context is recognized as an important predictor of individual-level behaviors and health outcomes (Pickett and Pearl 2001; Lee and Cubbin 2002; Sampson 2003). Neighborhoods, however, are difficult to define both in theory and in practice, and are often drawn to follow existing administrative boundaries or sampling schemes, or must be s...
As recently as 1988 the total fertility rate (TFR) in the Greater Accra Region of Ghana was 4.7 children per woman (compared to the national average of 6.4). The most recent (2008) Ghana Demographic and Health Survey estimates the TFR in the Greater Accra Region to be down to 2.5 (compared to 4.0 for the country as a whole). Within the core metropo...
Most of the future growth of population in the world is expected to take place in cities of developing countries. This fact alone provides a rationale for this volume, but there are also broad policy and programmatic reasons for our interest in the demography, health and well-being of urban centers in low income countries. Cities in developing coun...
The classification of image-objects is usually done using parametric statistical measures of central tendency and/or dispersion (e.g., mean or standard deviation). The objectives of this study were to analyze digital number histograms of image objects and evaluate classifications
measures exploiting characteristic signatures of such histograms. Two...
The neighborhood has been used as a sampling unit for exploring variations in health outcomes. In a variety of studies census tracts or ZIP codes have been used as proxies for neighborhoods because the boundaries are pre-defined units for which other data are readily available. However these spatial units can be arbitrary and do not account for soc...
As more Latin American migrants make their way to the United States, the issue of transnationalism has received increased scholarly attention. Transnationalism refers to the delinking of the individual from his or her government and an increase in international ties as a result of the economic globalization that promotes the movement of people, goo...
Recent studies indicate that the traditional rural-urban dichotomy pointing to cities as places of better health in the developing world can be complicated by poverty differentials. Knowledge of spatial patterns is essential to understanding the processes that link individual demographic outcomes to characteristics of a place. A significant limitat...
Population growth in West Africa has outpaced local efforts to expand potable water services, and private sector sale of packaged drinking water has filled an important gap in household water security. Consumption of drinking water packaged in plastic sachets has soared in West Africa over the last decade, but the long-term implications of these ch...
The overall objective of our research project is to understand the spatial inequality in health in Accra, the capital city of Ghana. We also utilize GIS technology to measure the association of adverse health and mortality outcomes with neighborhood ecology. We approached this in variety of ways, including multivariate analysis of imagery classific...
Background: The development of effective transmission risk reduction strategies among PLWHA requires greater understanding of behavioral determinants. Little is known about pre-diagnosis predictors of behavior change after diagnosis for any population. Methods: A secondary analysis was conducted using data collected in Tijuana for a study of determ...
West Africa has a rapidly growing population, an increasing fraction of which lives in urban informal settlements characterized by inadequate infrastructure and relatively high health risks. Little is known, however, about the spatial or health characteristics of cities in this region or about the spatial inequalities in health within them. In this...
The northwest border city of Tijuana is Mexico's fifth largest and is experiencing burgeoning drug use and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) epidemics. Because local geography influences disease risk, we explored the spatial distribution of HIV among injection drug users (IDUs). From 2006-2007, 1,056 IDUs were recruited using respondent-driven sam...
This paper uses newly collected household survey data from Accra, Ghana, to investigate whether incomes affect acute and chronic health outcomes in settings that can be considered representative for the large and rapidly growing urban centers of sub-Saharan Africa. The Time Use and Health Study in Accra collected information on incomes, current hea...
Intraurban differentials in safe drinking water in developing cities have been exacerbated by rapid population growth that exceeds expansion of local water infrastructure. In Accra, Ghana, municipal water is rationed to meet demand, and the gap in water services is increasingly being filled by private water vendors selling packaged "sachet" water....
Slums are examples of localized communities within third world urban systems representing a range of vulnerabilities and adaptive capacities. This study examines vulnerability in relation to flooding, environmental degradation, social-status, demographics, and health in the slums of Accra, Ghana by utilizing a place-based approach informed by field...
Little research has been conducted on how differing spatial resolutions or classification techniques affect image-driven identification and categorization of slum neighborhoods in developing nations. This study assesses the correlation between satellite-derived land cover and census-derived socioeconomic variables in Accra, Ghana to determine wheth...
The goal of this study was to map and quantify the number of newly constructed buildings in Accra, Ghana between 2002 and 2010 based on high spatial resolution satellite image data. Two semi-automated feature detection approaches for detecting and mapping newly constructed buildings based on QuickBird very high spatial resolution satellite imagery...
The goal of this study was to map and quantify the number of newly constructed buildings in Accra, Ghana between 2002 and 2010 based on high spatial resolution satellite image data. Two semi-automated feature detection approaches for detecting and mapping newly constructed buildings based on QuickBird very high spatial resolution satellite imagery...
We explored intraurban mobility of Tijuana, Mexico, injection drug users (IDUs). In 2005, 222 IDUs underwent behavioral surveys and infectious disease testing. Participants resided in 58 neighborhoods, but regularly injected in 30. From logistic regression, "mobile" IDUs (injecting ≥3 km from their residence) were more likely to cross the Mexico/U....
Intraurban differentials in access to safe drinking water in developing cities have been exacerbated by population growth that exceeds expansion of municipal water infrastructure. In Accra, Ghana, municipal water is rationed to fulfill demand that far exceeds production, and water delivery is ultimately influenced by both geography and income. The...
Purpose:
Dengue fever has re-emerged as an increasingly significant global health threat amid diminishing resources pledged for its control in developing nations. Efforts to limit breeding of the dengue vector Aedes aegypti are often hampered by lack of community awareness of the disease.
Methods:
Sixty-eight households in St Catherine Parish, J...
We evaluated psychosocial, built-environmental, and policy-related correlates of adolescents' indoor tanning use.
We developed 5 discrete data sets in the 100 most populous US cities, based on interviews of 6125 adolescents (aged 14-17 years) and their parents, analysis of state indoor tanning laws, interviews with enforcement experts, computed den...
Purpose: Dengue fever has re-emerged as an increasingly significant global health threat amid diminishing resources pledged for its control in developing nations. Efforts to limit breeding of the dengue vector Aedes aegypti are often hampered by lack of community awareness of the disease.
Methods: Sixty-eight households in St Catherine Parish, Jama...
The majority of undocumented immigrants to the United States enter through the southern border and most are from Mexico. Researchers in the US have been able to create estimates of how many unauthorised immigrants come from each country, but there has been little research on the geographical origins of immigrants from within Mexico. In this researc...
Intraurban differentials in access to safe drinking water in developing cities have been exacerbated by population growth that exceeds expansion of municipal water infrastructure. Despite progress in urban residents' access to an improved drinking water source, the cross-contamination of stored water in lowest-income neighborhoods may erode perceiv...
The Getis*Ord G
i
∗ statistic and the Getis spatial filtering method are shown in this paper to be very useful geospatial tools for uncovering the spatial patterns of human reproduction in a rural governorate in Egypt that had been assumed by many to be a spatially homogeneous area. We apply the G
i
* statistic to dasymetrically mapped data from th...
The objective was to test GEographic Object-based Image Analysis (GEOBIA) techniques for delineating neighborhoods of Accra, Ghana using QuickBird multispectral imagery. Two approaches to aggregating census enumeration areas (EAs) based on image-derived measures of vegetation objects were tested: (1) merging adjacent EAs according to vegetation mea...
Fertility levels remain high in most of sub-Saharan Africa, despite recent declines, and even in a large capital city such as Accra, Ghana, women are having children at a pace that is well above replacement level and this will contribute to significant levels of future population growth in the city. Our purpose in this paper is to evaluate the way...
What is an urban area? How do we know it when we see it? And how do we measure the concept of urban, so that we can study
it? This chapter reviews the many dimensions of urbanness in an attempt to synthesize the vast literature that exists on the
topic, but focuses especially on issues of classifying places as urban or rural in such a way that chan...
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is threefold: first, to introduce a conceptual model for assessing undergraduate student learning outcomes and satisfaction that involves concepts drawn from the services marketing and assessment literatures; second, to illustrate the utility of the model as implemented in an academic department (geography) within...
This study investigated the academic background and instructional practices of California family life education (FLE) teachers from home economics and other disciplines. A total of 661 principals and 415 teachers in schools with a ninth and/or tenth grade completed surveys examining teacher and course characteristics. Principals reported that appro...
Irrigated urban agriculture (UA), which has helped alleviate poverty and increase food security in rapidly urbanizing sub-Saharan Africa, may inadvertently support malaria vectors. Previous studies have not identified a variable distance effect on malaria prevalence from UA. This study examines the relationships between self-reported malaria inform...
U.S. adolescents and young adults are using indoor tanning at high rates, even though it has been linked to both melanoma and squamous cell cancer. Because the availability of commercial indoor tanning facilities may influence use, data are needed on the number and density of such facilities.
In March 2006, commercial indoor tanning facilities in 1...
Indoor tanning has been linked to both melanoma and squamous cell cancer, and its prevalence is as high as 25% among older U.S. teen girls. CITY100 (Correlates of Indoor Tanning in Youth) is a multi-component project to identify the correlates of indoor tanning. Based on ecological models, we have developed data sets for the 100 most populous U.S....
GelfandDonald E., Aging and Ethnicity: Knowledge and Services, Springer Publishing Company, New York, 1994, 228 pp., $35.95, ISBN 0 8261 7420 5. - Volume 15 Issue 1 - John R. Weeks
Adolescents frequenting indoor tanning facilities may have an increased risk of skin cancer. The high level of indoor tanning by this age group may be due, in part, to the large number of tanning facilities in US cities. This study examined how facilities are distributed throughout one large county. Based on ecological models, it was predicted that...
A segmentation and hierarchical classification approach applied to QuickBird multispectral satellite data was implemented, with the goal of delineating residential land use polygons and identifying low and high socio-economic status of neighbourhoods within Accra, Ghana. Two types of object-based classification strategies were tested, one based on...
Slums are home to a large fraction of urban residents in cities of developing nations, but little attempt has been made to go beyond a simple slum/non-slum dichotomy, nor to identify slums more quantitatively than through local reputation. We use census data from Accra, Ghana, to create an index that applies the UN-Habitat criteria for a place to b...