Brief Introduction
Using data driven and community informed approaches, my work examines the relationship between a neighbourhood social and physical conditions and the well-being of residents, as part of informing health planning policies.
- Research interests: health/medical geography, neighbourhood environments and health, contextual and non-medical determinants of health,
physical activity, walkability, immigrants health, and spatial access to services.
- Analytical skills: quantitative geography, mixed-methods, Geo-spatial data science, spatial econometrics, Geographic information systems (GIS),
statistics, and cartography.
In my free time, I am either practicing Olympic recurve archery or exploring maps created by ancient geographers and explorers
(e.g., Alsherif Al-Idrissi, Zakariya Al-Qzwini, and Abu El-Hasan El-Masudi).
Overview of PhD Dissertation
The dissertation examines how the design and quality of urban environments shape active living in Canadian metropolitan areas,
with an attention to underserved neighbourhoods and racialized communities. It addresses a persistent gap between how walkability
is measured in research and how residents experience their neighbourhoods and tackles this gap through two complementary phases.
- The first phase empirically deconstructs walkability into outcome-specific dimensions across the Toronto Metropolitan Area. Using statistical modelling to test whether
different walkability domains — pedestrian infrastructure, greenery, and access to water surfaces — function as unified constructs, followed by spatial regression methods
that account for neighbouring areas' influence, this part identifies which environmental dimensions drive active commuting versus broader physical activity.
- The second part shifts to understanding perceived walkability among racialized residents through a two-step mixed-methods design. The first step used participatory mapping
sessions — including neighbourhood sketching, group discussions, and surveys — with residents in Metropolitan Toronto to identify the social, cultural, and environmental
factors that shape walking behaviour. These insights informed the development of an adapted Neighbourhood Environment Walkability Survey (NEWS) tailored to racialized populations
in Canadian urban contexts. The second step validates this adapted instrument through two methods: cognitive interviews, in which participants describe their thinking as they
complete the survey to identify unclear wording or cultural misalignments, and test–retest reliability assessment, which administers the survey at two time points to participants
and analyzes the data, as part of confirming that the survey produces consistent and stable measurements over time.
Through integrating objective infrastructure analysis with subjective experiences, the dissertation delivers a set of outcome-specific walkability measures suitable for spatial health analysis and urban planning,
alongside a validated perceived walkability instrument designed for racialized populations in Canadian urban contexts. These tools support the work of planners, public health practitioners, and researchers engaging in the design inclusive urban environments.
Recent Work and Activities