Invited Commentary: Advancing Theory and Methods for Multilevel Models of Residential Neighborhoods and Health

In less than 10 years, the field of epidemiology has been transformed. During this time, multilevel modeling has gone from a little-known and perhaps even unwelcome method of analysis to a household name. Multilevel models appeared much earlier in the fields of demography, sociology of education, and criminology (refer, for example, to Raudenbush et al. ( The growth in the publication of multilevel studies has paralleled and contributed greatly to the reemergence of social epidemiologic research (4-11). Multilevel models assessing the effects of neighborhood residential environments on health outcomes have been the most common type of contextual study to date. Research has examined associations between neighborhood characteristics, frequently socioeconomic position, and a variety of health outcomes, including perinatal health (12-15), mortality (16, 17), health behaviors (18, 19), women's health (20, 21), heart disease (22-24), disability (25), and child health (26) among others. Furthermore, many reviews have been published concerning the statistical methods and rationale for, as well as the quality of, the existing multilevel studies on health