Environmental Impacts on Families

This book examines ways in which families' physical environments have implications for their relationships and the health and well-being of their members. Attention is given to three aspects of the physical environment-disasters, climate change, and the built environment-and the challenges these may create for families. Chapters describe particular considerations within each of these three physical environment challenges, the ways they affect families, and factors that protect families, promote their resilience and enable them to flourish. Finally, the volume offers recommendations for the role of government programs and policies to support families to overcome and/or adapt to environmental challenges as well as highlights the efficacy of evidence-based interventions aimed at promoting family resilience.

Featured areas of coverage include:

• Extreme natural events and families' postdisaster recovery.
• Family adaptations to climate change.
• The built environment and children's health and well-being.
• Community-driven approaches to address environmental inequities.
• The urban environment of family caregiving.

Environmental Impacts on Families is a must-have resource for researchers, professors, and graduate students as well as clinicians, therapists, policymakers, and other related professionals in developmental psychology, family studies, environmental health and policy, social work, public health, educational policy and politics, economics, migration studies, and all interrelated disciplines.

Selena E. Ortiz, Ph.D., MPH, is Associate Professor of Health Policy and Administration, Demography, and Public Policy at Penn State. Dr. Ortiz's research focuses on health equity, population health, housing affordability, and social and health policies. This work is structured around two themes: the causes of unequal access to health services and the consequences for health outcomes and the determinants of health and social policy formation, support, and adoption. The unique stamp of her work is its theoretical focus on identifying processes of health inequity using diverse mixed-methods approaches.

Susan M. McHale, Ph.D., is Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Human Development and Emeritus Professor of Demography at Penn State. Her research focuses on children and adolescents' family roles, relationships, and daily experiences and how these family dynamics are linked to youth development and adjustment. Dr. McHale's research highlights family gender dynamics and the role of sociocultural practices and values in youth development and well-being.

Valarie King, Ph.D., is Professor of Sociology, Demography, and Human Development and Family Studies and an Associate of the Population Research Institute at Penn State. Her research focuses on intergenerational relationships across the life course and their implications for the health, well-being, and development of family members. Dr. King's most recent work focuses on elucidating the factors that promote the development of strong ties between children and their stepfathers, and the ways in which stepfathers can promote children's well-being.

Jennifer E. Glick, Ph.D., is Professor of Demography, Arnold S. and Bette G. Hoffman Professor in Sociology, and an Associate of the Population Research Institute at Penn State. Dr. Glick is a social demographer with expertise in migration, family processes and children's education and developmental trajectories. She has written extensively on the educational outcomes among children of immigrants in the United States and how migration alters family relationships and living arrangements.