A survey-based study of 246 village-level social welfare data operators found that business architecture, cross-organizational collaboration and technological readiness were positively and statistically significantly associated with perceived e-government integration impact in two Indonesian regencies. The research, focused on Gunung Kidul and Bangkalan, examined organizational, institutional, relational and technological capabilities associated with social welfare data integration. Governance and leadership and information policy did not show statistically significant direct relationships with perceived integration impact in the pooled sample.

The authors analyzed the survey with partial least squares structural equation modeling. In their framework, e-government integration impact, or EGII, represents perceived improvements in information, system and service quality, responsiveness and public trust. E-government integration scope, or EGIS, describes the breadth of integration across data, applications, electronic communication and knowledge-sharing processes.

EGII was strongly associated with EGIS, meaning that operators reporting more favorable perceived integration outcomes also tended to report broader integration. Because this was an observational analysis of survey responses, the results establish statistical relationships rather than causal effects. The findings identify three capabilities with significant direct relationships to EGII in the pooled model: business architecture, cross-organizational collaboration and technological readiness.

The evidence does not provide operational definitions for these constructs, but the results show that their measured levels were associated with respondents’ assessments of e-government integration outcomes. By contrast, governance and leadership and information policy had no statistically significant direct relationships with EGII in that analysis. This absence of a detected direct relationship does not establish that the two factors are unimportant or that they operate only through indirect pathways, because the supplied findings do not report such indirect effects.

A regency-based robustness analysis found that some relationships were sensitive to local implementation conditions. Significant differences between Gunung Kidul and Bangkan were reported for the technological-readiness-to-EGII relationship and the EGII-to-EGIS relationship. The geographic comparison therefore cautions against assuming that the same capability relationships apply uniformly across the two regencies, although it does not identify the specific local practices responsible for those differences.

Its direct contribution is to show which measured interoperability capabilities were associated with perceived integration impact in the surveyed population, alongside evidence that some relationships varied between the two regencies.

Subject of Research: Survey-based analysis of interoperability capabilities for social welfare data integration in two Indonesian regencies

Article Title: Determinants of E-government interoperability capabilities for social welfare data integration in Gunung Kidul and Bangkalan Regencies, Indonesia

Article References: Fikri, R., Purnomo, E. P., Pribadi, U., Mohamed, A. M., & Mohammad, N. B. (2026). Determinants of E-government interoperability capabilities for social welfare data integration in Gunung Kidul and Bangkalan Regencies, Indonesia. Discover Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43621-026-04608-5

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s43621-026-04608-5

Keywords: social welfare data, e-government, interoperability, Indonesia, PLS-SEM, technological readiness, cross-organizational collaboration, business architecture, digital governance, public services, Determinants, capabilities

Twenty-five years after the September 11 terrorist attacks, researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai have uncovered evidence that the environments in which World Trade Center responders live today may be quietly shaping their risk of frailty, post-traumatic stress disorder, and depression. The study, published in Nature Communications, is the first to examine how neighborhood-level environmental exposures later in life may interact with the chemical and psychological injuries sustained during the disaster response, adding a new dimension to one of the most intensively studied disaster health cohorts in the world.

The research team analyzed data from 18,734 responders who both live in New York City and receive care through one of the World Trade Center Health Program Clinical Centers of Excellence. These responders represent a population that experienced an extraordinary confluence of toxic exposures—dust, combustion products, airborne particulates, and a cocktail of known and suspected carcinogens—alongside severe psychological trauma. While decades of prior research have documented elevated rates of respiratory disease, cancer, and mental illness in this group, far less attention had been paid to whether the everyday conditions of their neighborhoods might compound or buffer those effects as responders age.

To answer that question, the researchers linked each responder’s residential address to annual estimates of three environmental factors: air pollution, high ambient temperatures, and neighborhood greenness, the last typically quantified through satellite-derived vegetation indices. This exposure-assessment approach, common in the field of environmental epidemiology, allowed the team to characterize the conditions each participant encountered where they lived year after year, rather than relying on broad regional averages. The researchers then examined whether those exposures were associated with the probability of being classified as frail, and with diagnosed PTSD and depression.

The results were striking in their consistency. Responders living in hotter neighborhoods—areas that experience more extreme heat days, a burden that falls disproportionately on densely built urban districts with impervious surfaces and little tree canopy—showed an elevated risk of frailty, a geriatric syndrome marked by diminished physiological reserve and heightened vulnerability to stressors. Elevated concentrations of air pollution were likewise associated with increased risks of both frailty and adverse mental health outcomes. Frailty itself is increasingly understood as a whole-body phenomenon, involving chronic inflammation, immune dysregulation, and cumulative cellular wear, all of which are plausible biological pathways through which heat and pollution could accelerate aging.

The mental health findings carried equal weight. Higher pollution and heat exposure were associated with increased odds of PTSD and depression, while responders living in greener surroundings—those with more parks, trees, and vegetated land near their homes—showed lower risks of all three conditions. This inverse association with greenness aligns with a substantial body of literature suggesting that access to green space can reduce psychological stress, encourage physical activity, dampen inflammation, and moderate urban heat, though the observational design of the study means that causation cannot be definitively established.

Perhaps the most provocative finding concerned interaction effects. The researchers found that responders who had experienced higher levels of World Trade Center–related chemical and psychological exposure appeared more vulnerable to the effects of environmental stressors in their current neighborhoods. In other words, the disaster and the decades that followed may not be independent chapters in these individuals’ health histories. Instead, responders already carrying the biological imprint of trauma and toxic dust—including altered inflammatory profiles, epigenetic changes, and persistent hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis dysregulation—may enter later life with less reserve to absorb additional environmental insults. Everyday exposures that might be merely uncomfortable for a healthy middle-aged adult could, for these individuals, translate into measurable acceleration of physical decline and psychological deterioration.

“Twenty-five years after 9/11, we are still learning about the factors that influence the health of those who responded to the attacks,” said Helena Furman Krasnov, PhD, postdoctoral researcher at the Icahn School of Medicine and the study’s first author. “Our findings suggest that everyday exposures, including heat, air pollution, and access to green space, may contribute to responders’ long-term physical and psychological well-being. Understanding these factors could help identify new opportunities to support healthy aging in this population.”

The study’s senior and corresponding author, Maayan Yitshak-Sade, MPH, PhD, Associate Professor of Environmental Medicine at Mount Sinai and a member of the Institute for Exposomic Research, framed the work within the broader exposome paradigm—the effort to capture the totality of environmental exposures an individual accumulates over a lifetime. “Our findings suggest that the health consequences of 9/11 may not end with the disaster itself,” she said. “For responders already carrying the biological effects of trauma and toxic exposures, everyday environmental conditions may represent an additional source of stress on the body and mind. These findings highlight the importance of considering where people live, not just what they experienced during the disaster.”

That framing underscores a conceptual shift in disaster medicine. Traditional models tend to treat a catastrophic event as a discrete exposure with a defined aftermath. The Mount Sinai findings instead suggest that disaster-related health effects may unfold across an entire life course, modified by conditions that have no obvious connection to the original event. A responder’s risk of frailty in 2026 may reflect not only the hours spent at Ground Zero, but also the temperature of the summers they have endured since, the particulate matter drifting through their streets, and whether a leafy park sits within walking distance of their apartment.

The study arrives at a moment when urban environmental health has become a pressing policy concern. Extreme heat now kills more Americans annually than any other weather phenomenon, and cities including New York have launched ambitious initiatives to expand tree canopy, create cool corridors, and retrofit public housing with resilient cooling infrastructure. Air pollution, even at levels within regulatory limits, continues to be linked to cardiovascular, respiratory, and neurocognitive harm. If the associations identified in this cohort hold up under further scrutiny, they could strengthen the case for targeted environmental interventions—not as amenities, but as clinical supports for a vulnerable population.

The implications also extend well beyond the World Trade Center community. The researchers point out that survivors and responders from other disasters—wildfires that blanket entire regions in smoke and ash, industrial accidents that release toxic plumes, building collapses that bury rescue workers in dust—may face the same dual burden of physical and psychological exposures that continues to shape health long after the initial event. Climate change is intensifying heat waves and wildfire seasons simultaneously, meaning that disaster-affected populations may increasingly find themselves living in precisely the kinds of hostile urban microclimates the study identifies as risky. The framework developed here could inform how health surveillance programs for disaster cohorts are designed, prompting them to collect residential and environmental data alongside clinical outcomes.

The authors are careful to note the study’s observational nature. Associations between neighborhood environment and health can be confounded by socioeconomic status, housing quality, access to care, and the self-selection of healthier individuals into greener, quieter neighborhoods. The investigators controlled for available covariates, and the sheer size of the cohort lends statistical power, but randomized evidence on green space exposure is practically impossible to generate, and residual confounding remains an inherent limitation of the design. Longitudinal follow-up, and ideally natural-experiment analyses—such as the addition of new parks or major infrastructure changes—will be needed to firm up causal inference.

That work is already on the horizon. The team plans to investigate whether beneficial environmental factors, including green space and access to healthy food, can actively reduce the long-term health effects associated with World Trade Center–related exposures—a question that shifts the framing from risk identification to potential intervention. If confirmatory studies support the protective role of greenness, the findings could justify clinical guidance for responders, and potentially for other disaster-exposed populations, that goes beyond medication and monitoring to encompass the places where patients live.

For a population that has already given so much and borne so much, the idea that healing might partly depend on the landscape outside the front door is both sobering and hopeful. It suggests that some of the damage inflicted on September 11, 2001 may not be fixed, but modifiable—and that the next chapter of care for responders could be written not only in clinics, but in city planning offices, park commissions, and the slow, patient work of greening the neighborhoods where aging heroes live out their lives.