title: "Contextualizing Context": Reconciling Environmental Exposures, Social Networks, and Location Preferences in Health Research.
abstract: The aim of this paper is to review the recent advances in health and place research and discuss concepts useful to explore how context affects health. More specifically, it reviews measures and tools used to account for place; concepts relating to daily mobility and multiple exposure to places, and further points to the intertwining between social and spatial networks to help further our understanding of how context translates into health profiles.
  
  
  
  Significant advances in environmental or neighborhood effects have been made in the last decades. Specifically, conceptual and methodological developments have improved our consideration of spatial processes, shifting from a residential-based view of context to a more dynamic activity space and daily mobility paradigm. Yet, such advances have led to overlooking other potentially important aspects related to social networks and decision-making processes. With an increasing capacity to collect high-precision data on daily mobility and behavior, new possibilities in understanding how environments relate to behavior and health inequalities arise. Two overlooked aspects need to be addressed: the questions of "with or for whom", and "why". While the former calls for a better consideration of social networks and social interactions, the latter calls for refining our understanding of place preference and decision-making leading to daily mobility and multiple exposures.
authors.affiliation: Montreal University Hospital Research Center (CRCHUM), 850, rue St-Denis, Montréal, Québec, H2X 0A9, Canada. yan.kestens@umontreal.ca.|École de Santé Publique de l'Université de Montréal (ESPUM), 7101, rue du Parc, Montréal, Québec,, H3N 1X9, Canada. yan.kestens@umontreal.ca.
authors.forename: Yan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Kestens
authors.affiliation: Montreal University Hospital Research Center (CRCHUM), 850, rue St-Denis, Montréal, Québec, H2X 0A9, Canada.|École de Santé Publique de l'Université de Montréal (ESPUM), 7101, rue du Parc, Montréal, Québec,, H3N 1X9, Canada.
authors.forename: Rania
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Wasfi
authors.affiliation: Montreal University Hospital Research Center (CRCHUM), 850, rue St-Denis, Montréal, Québec, H2X 0A9, Canada.|École de Santé Publique de l'Université de Montréal (ESPUM), 7101, rue du Parc, Montréal, Québec,, H3N 1X9, Canada.
authors.forename: Alexandre
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Naud
authors.affiliation: Inserm, UMR-S 1136, Pierre Louis Institute of Epidemiology and Public Health, Nemesis team, Paris, France.|UPMC Univ Paris 06, UMR-S 1136, Pierre Louis Institute of Epidemiology and Public Health, Nemesis team, Sorbonne Universités, Paris, France.
authors.forename: Basile
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Chaix
mesh_terms: D035843:Biomedical Research / Q000379:methods*; D004781:Environmental Exposure; D004782:Environmental Health; D006801:Humans; D012111:Residence Characteristics; D012931:Social Environment; D012944:Social Support; D062211:Spatio-Temporal Analysis
keywords: Causality; Daily mobility; Environmental exposure; Neighborhood effects; Social networks; Spatial decision-making