Visitability surveillance, prevalence, and correlates in Florida.

BACKGROUND: A primary means of social connection is visiting friends and families in their homes. Visitability is designing houses in a way that enables people to visit others' homes regardless of physical limitations or use of mobility assistive devices. OBJECTIVE: The goals of this study were to develop a set of questions about visitability that could be used for surveillance and to assess the prevalence and correlates of visitability features in Florida. METHODS: We added five questions to the 2011 Florida Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (n = 12,399 respondents) and used complementary log-log regression models to estimate the prevalence ratio of each visitability feature. RESULTS: The prevalence of visitability features in Florida homes was high for respondents with and without disabilities, though there was variation by visitability feature. A level entrance to the home and wide doorways were present in most respondents' homes (84.9% and 86.2%, respectively), while a main floor bathroom (59.6%) and a zero-step entrance (45.4%) were reported less commonly. People with a disability were less likely to report that their own home had doorways wide enough to accommodate a wheelchair compared to people without a disability (PR = 0.87, 95% CI: 0.80-0.95). Visitability features were less common in households with lower income and also in trailers or mobile homes than in detached single-family homes. CONCLUSIONS: The survey questions used in this study could be implemented in other states to measure and track visitability and monitor progress toward the Healthy People 2020 goal. Building or retro-fitting homes to include visitability features could increase the participation and inclusion of people with disabilities in community life.

Same sex marriage and the perceived assault on opposite sex marriage.

BACKGROUND: Marriage benefits both individuals and societies, and is a fundamental determinant of health. Until recently same sex couples have been excluded from legally recognized marriage in the United States. Recent debate around legalization of same sex marriage has highlighted for anti-same sex marriage advocates and policy makers a concern that allowing same sex couples to marry will lead to a decrease in opposite sex marriages. Our objective is to model state trends in opposite sex marriage rates by implementation of same sex marriages and other same sex unions. METHODS AND FINDINGS: Marriage data were obtained for all fifty states plus the District of Columbia from 1989 through 2009. As these marriage rates are non-stationary, a generalized error correction model was used to estimate long run and short run effects of same sex marriages and strong and weak same sex unions on rates of opposite sex marriage. We found that there were no significant long-run or short run effects of same sex marriages or of strong or weak same sex unions on rates of opposite sex marriage. CONCLUSION: A deleterious effect on rates of opposite sex marriage has been argued to be a motivating factor for both the withholding and the elimination of existing rights of same sex couples to marry by policy makers-including presiding justices of current litigation over the rights of same sex couples to legally marry. Such claims do not appear credible in the face of the existing evidence, and we conclude that rates of opposite sex marriages are not affected by legalization of same sex civil unions or same sex marriages.