Peter James

Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute · Population Medicine

Importance Green space may be associated with obesity outcomes in children by promoting physical activity and reducing stress. However, previous studies have mostly used a single measure of green space and body mass index (BMI) as the sole indicator of adiposity. Objective To examine associations of the satellite-based normalized difference vegeta...

Background: Accurately capturing individuals' experiences with greenspace at ground-level can provide valuable insights into their impact on children’s health. However, most previous research has relied on coarse satellite-based measurements. Methods: We utilized CVH and residential address data from Project Viva, a US-based pre-birth cohort, trac...

Background Previous studies investigating environmental and behavioral drivers of chronic disease have often had limited temporal and spatial data coverage. Smartphone-based digital phenotyping mitigates the limitations of these studies by using intensive data collection schemes that take advantage of the widespread use of smartphones while allowin...

Background Sleep is influenced by the environments that we experience while awake and while asleep. Neighborhood walkability has been linked with chronic disease and lifestyle factors, such as physical activity; however, evidence for the association between walkability and sleep is mixed. Extant studies assign walkability based on residential addre...

Background: Midlife residential exposure to greenspace may slow cognitive decline by increasing opportunities for physical activity and social connection, restoring attention, or reducing stress or adverse environmental exposures. However, prospective studies on the association between greenness and cognitive decline are sparse. Objective: We inve...

Background: The potential health benefits of exposure to vegetation, or greenness, are well documented, but there are few nationwide studies in Brazil, a country facing challenges related to land-use planning, deforestation, and environmental health risks. Objectives: In this study, we investigated the association between greenness and hospitali...

Introduction Protective associations of greenspace with Parkinson’s disease (PD) have been observed in some studies. Visual exposure to greenspace seems to be important for some of the proposed pathways underlying these associations. However, most studies use overhead-view measures (e.g., satellite imagery, land-classification data) that do not cap...

Introduction: Many women experience suboptimal cardiovascular health (CVH) during midlife. Greenspace exposure has been inversely associated with cardiovascular disease outcomes and risk factors, but the majority of studies use satellite-based assessment of greenspace and limited evidence exists regarding overall CVH. Methods: We performed a longit...

Introduction: Research on greenspace and cardiovascular health (CVH) in children is limited, and most previous studies rely on coarse satellite-based measurements of greenspace, which do not capture exposure as individuals experience it. Street View imagery (SVI) enables measurement of greenspace from a ground-level perspective and captures specifi...

Background: Access to fast food outlets (FFO) has increased in recent years and may decrease diet quality and increase cardiovascular disease risk. Inflammation is a well-established cardiovascular disease risk factor, but it remains unclear whether inflammation is one of the pathways explaining associations between the food environment and inflamm...

Metabolic Syndrome presents a significant public health challenge associated with an increased risk of noncommunicable diseases such as cardiovascular conditions. Evidence shows that green spaces and the built environment may influence metabolic syndrome. We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of observational studies published through...

Urbanization has altered land surface properties driving changes in micro-climates. Urban form influences people’s activities, environmental exposures, and health. Developing detailed and unified longitudinal measures of urban form is essential to quantify these relationships. Local Climate Zones [LCZ] are a culturally-neutral urban form classifica...

Metabolic Syndrome presents a significant public health challenge associated with an increased risk of noncommunicable diseases such as cardiovascular conditions. Evidence shows that green spaces and the built environment may influence metabolic syndrome. We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of observational studies published through...

Background: Long-term noise exposure is associated with cardiovascular disease (CVD), including acute cardiovascular events such as myocardial infarction and stroke. However, longitudinal cohort studies in the U.S. of long-term noise and CVD are almost exclusively from Europe and few modeled nighttime noise, when an individual is likely at home or...

BACKGROUND Previous studies investigating environmental and behavioral drivers of chronic disease have often had limited temporal and spatial data coverage. Smartphone-based digital phenotyping mitigates the limitations of these studies by using intensive data collection schemes that take advantage of the widespread use of smartphones while allowin...

Objectives: Associations of stress-related coping strategies with lifespan among the general population are understudied. Coping strategies are characterized as being either adaptive or maladaptive, but it is unknown the degree to which variability in tailoring their implementation to different contexts may influence lifespan. Method: Women (N =...

Objective: To examine prospectively associations of neighborhood opportunity with the presence of dampness or pests in the home environment during early adolescence. Study Design: We geocoded residential addresses from 831 children (mean age 7.9 years, 2007-2011) in the Project Viva cohort. We linked each address with census tract-level Child Oppo...

Background: The extent to which physical and social attributes of neighborhoods play a role in childhood asthma remains understudied. Objective: To examine associations of neighborhood-level opportunity and social vulnerability measures with childhood asthma incidence. Design, Setting, and Participants: This cohort study used data from children i...

Introduction: Most climate-health studies focus on temperature; however, less is known about health effects of exposure to atmospheric moisture. Humid air limits sweat evaporation from the body and can in turn exert strain on the cardiovascular system. We evaluated associations of long-term exposure to summer specific humidity with cardiovascular...

Background: Inconsistent results have been found in the literature on associations of greenness, or vegetation quantity, and physical activity. However, few studies have assessed associations between mobility-based greenness and physical activity from mobile health data from smartphone and wearable devices with fine spatial and temporal resolution...

Background: Circadian disruption is a potential risk factor for advanced prostate cancer, and light at night (LAN) exposure may disrupt circadian rhythms. We evaluated whether outdoor LAN increases the risk of prostate cancer. Methods: We prospectively followed 49,148 participants in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study from 1986 through 201...

The 3-30-300 rule offers benchmarks for cities to promote equitable nature access. It dictates that individuals should see three trees from their dwelling, have 30% tree canopy in their neighborhood, and live within 300 meters of a high-quality green space. Implementing this demands thorough measurement, monitoring, and evaluation methods. Seven da...

Background: Long-term noise exposure is associated with cardiovascular disease (CVD), including acute cardiovascular events such as myocardial infarction and stroke. However, longitudinal cohort studies of long-term noise and CVD are almost exclusively from Europe, and few modelled nighttime and daytime noise separately. We aimed to examine the pro...

Background: There is growing evidence that unfavorable neighborhood contexts may influence prostate cancer (CaP) progression. Whether these associations may be explained in part by differences in tumor-level somatic alterations remain unclear. Methods: Data on tumor markers (PTEN, p53, ERG, and SPINK1) were obtained from 1,157 participants with...

Objective Evidence suggests that greater social integration is related to lower mortality rates. However, studies among African-Americans are limited. We examined whether higher social integration was associated with lower mortality in 5306 African-Americans from the Jackson Heart Study, who completed the Berkman-Syme Social Network Index in 2000–2...

Adverse neighborhood social and natural (greenspace) environments may contribute to prostate cancer (CaP) etiology, but mechanisms are unclear. We examined associations between neighborhood environment and prostate intratumoral inflammation in 967 men diagnosed with CaP with available tissue from 1986-2009 in the Health Professionals Follow-up Stud...

Background: Sleep disruption is linked with chronic disease, and aircraft noise can disrupt sleep. However, there are few investigations of aircraft noise and sleep in large cohorts. Objectives: We examined associations between aircraft noise and self-reported sleep duration and quality in the Nurses' Health Study, a large prospective cohort. M...

Environmental exposures have been linked to COVID-19 severity. Previous studies examined very few environmental factors, and often only separately without considering the totality of the environment, or the exposome. In addition, existing risk prediction models of severe COVID-19 predominantly rely on demographic and clinical factors. To address th...

Study objective: To examine the association between light at night (LAN) and multiple sleep health dimensions. Methods: Among 47,765 Sister Study participants, indoor LAN (TV on in the room, light(s) on in room, light from outside the room, nightlight, no light) and sleep dimensions were self-reported at baseline (2003-2009). We used Poisson reg...

Global climate change has sparked efforts to adapt to increasing temperatures, especially in urban areas that experience increased day and nighttime temperatures due to the urban heat island effect. The addition of greenspace has been suggested as a possible means for urban centers to respond to increasing urban temperatures. Thus, it is important...

Background: Emerging evidence has suggested lifestyle and behavioral factors such as physical activity, diet, and sleep may be associated with cardiometabolic health outcomes in US adults. However, these studies typically have limited temporal or spatial coverage. The current study aimed to fill in this gap by applying smartphone-based digital phen...

Unlabelled: Green spaces may be protective against COVID-19 incidence. They may provide outdoor, ventilated, settings for physical and social activities and therefore decrease transmission risk. We examined the association between neighborhood greenness and COVID-19-like illness incidence using individual-level data. Methods: The study populatio...

Background: More than a third of children and adolescents consume foods from quick-service restaurants (QSRs) daily, which is associated with an increased risk of diet-related adverse health conditions. Objective: To examine trends in the proximity of top-selling QSR chains to all public schools across the United States (US) between 2006-2018 by...

Background: Several studies have evaluated whether the distribution of natural environments differs between marginalized and privileged neighborhoods. However, most studies restricted their analyses to a single or handful of cities and used different natural environment measures. Objectives: We evaluated whether natural environments are inequita...

Importance Exposure to natural environments has been associated with health outcomes related to neurological diseases. However, the few studies that have examined associations of natural environments with neurological diseases report mixed findings. Objective To evaluate associations of natural environments with hospital admissions for Alzheimer d...

Most spatial epidemiological studies of nature-health relationships use generalized greenspace measures. For instance, coarse-resolution spatial data containing normalized difference vegetative index (NDVI) values are prominent despite criticisms, such as the inability to restrain exposure estimates to public and private land. Non-threatening natur...

Unlabelled: Few studies have prospectively examined long-term associations between neighborhood socioeconomic status (nSES) and mortality risk, independent of demographic and lifestyle risk factors. Methods: We assessed associations between nSES and all-cause, nonaccidental mortality among women in the Nurses' Health Study (NHS) 1986-2014 (N = 1...

Importance: Physical and social neighborhood attributes may have implications for children's growth and development patterns. The extent to which these attributes are associated with body mass index (BMI) trajectories and obesity risk from childhood to adolescence remains understudied. Objective: To examine associations of neighborhood-level mea...

BACKGROUND Exposure to natural vegetation (i.e., “greenspace”) is related to beneficial outcomes, including higher positive and lower negative affect, in those with and without mental health concerns. Only recently have researchers started to examine dynamic associations between greenspace exposure and affect within individuals over time. Smartphon...

Background Exposure to natural vegetation (ie, “greenspace”) is related to beneficial outcomes, including higher positive and lower negative affect, in individuals with and those without mental health concerns. Researchers have yet to examine dynamic associations between greenspace exposure and affect within individuals over time. Smartphone-based...

Introduction The burden of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and AD-related dementias (ADRD) is increasing nationally and globally, with disproportionate impacts on lower-income, lower education and systematically marginalised older adults. Presence of inequalities in neighbourhood factors (eg, social context, physical and built environments) may affect ris...

Background Short-term exposure to high or low temperatures is associated with increased mortality and morbidity. Less is known about effects of long-term exposure to high or low temperatures. Prolonged exposure to high or low temperatures might contribute to pathophysiological mechanisms, thereby influencing the development of diseases. Our aim was...

Purpose: Outdoor light at night (LAN) can result in circadian disruption and hormone dysregulation and is a suspected risk factor for some cancers. Our study is the first to evaluate the association between LAN and risk of endometrial cancer, a malignancy with known relationship to circulating estrogen levels. Methods: We linked enrollment addre...

Background: Previous studies have linked environmental exposures with anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH), a marker of ovarian reserve. However, associations with multiple environment factors has to our knowledge not been addressed. Methods: We included a total of 2,447 premenopausal women in the Nurses' Health Study II (NHSII) who provided blood sampl...