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episummer Assessing Neighborhoods in Epidemiology Course Description A large body of research in epidemiology and population health has investigated connections between neighborhood (e.g. residential, social and work) characteristics (e.g. crime rate, density of fast food restaurants, distance to parks) and a myriad of health outcomes (e.g. obesity, mental health, substance use). This research has characterized neighborhood factors in multiple ways. This one-day course will discuss standard and emerging methods to study neighborhood characteristics. In particular, the course will provide an overview of neighborhood characteristic assessment methods, including self-report, systematic social observation, geographic information system (GIS) methods, web-based geospatial methods, real-time geospatial methods, crowd-sourced geospatial methods and information retrieval methods. We will discuss the strengths and limitations of each neighborhood characteristic assessment methods (e.g. ease of administration, validity), and students will be provided with examples of each neighborhood assessment method applied in the epidemiology and population health literature. In addition, this course will discuss different methods to examine neighborhood boundaries, including self-report, administrative definitions, ego-centric buffers and global positioning system (GPS)-defined activity spaces. We will discuss the strengths and limitations of each method of examining neighborhood boundaries (e.g. spatial misclassification, technical difficulty), and students will be provided with examples of each neighborhood boundary applied in the epidemiology and population health literature.