384 children participated in the Danish arm of the European Youth Heart Study were followed up 6 years later. Cardio-respiratory fitness was significantly associated with cycling to school in children and adolescents of both sexes. Hence cycling to school may contribute to higher cardiovascular fitness in young people.
Archive for category Environment
Over the next five years, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research will 1) Investigate the personal and environmental factors that influence the uptake and maintenance of a healthy lifestyle and 2) Evaluate mechanisms for translating evidence into sustainable public policy.
Officials in Madison launched a project to identify and resolve barriers to bike accessibility. Current Madison city law requires private developers to include bicycle racks in new construction projects. To ensure that the city is holding itself to the same standard, city officials teamed up with the University of Wisconsin to identify all the public bicycle racks in the city, as well as any areas where large volumes of bikes were chained to trees or fences in the absence of bicycle racks. Researchers also evaluated the condition of existing bicycle racks. City officials then tapped Global Positioning System technology to create a virtual map that bikers can use to navigate local bike routes and identify available bike racks. To further improve the city’s bike friendliness, officials have entered the data into a geographical information system that determines the city’s current bike capacity and indicates where improvements are needed.
Food- and activity-related establishments are increasingly viewed as neighbourhood resources that potentially condition health-related behaviour. The objective of the current study was to establish, using on-site verification, the validity of measures of availability of food stores and physical activity establishments that were obtained from commercial database and Internet searches. Such commercial data sources may provide a valid alternative to field observations and could prove a valuable tool in the evaluation of commercial environments relevant to eating behaviour. In contrast, this study did not find strong evidence in support of commercial and Internet data sources to represent neighbourhood opportunities for active lifestyle.
Researchers at University of Washington in Seattle followed more than 3,800 low income mainly African American children, 3 to 16 years old, who resided at the same address in Marion, County, Indiana, for 2 consecutive years. Children living in city neighborhoods with higher “greenness” ratings seem to gain less weight over time than their counterparts living in areas with less green space, a new study suggests.
Active transport is strongly associated with the use of multiple recreation sites by children and adolescents, even when accounting for proximity and demographic factors. Adolescents living in neighborhoods with better traffic safety walked/biked to more recreation sites for physical activity. Findings support the need for built environments and transportation policies that facilitate safe, active transport to recreation sites for youth physical activity.
In this 22 year longitudinal study researchers from Canada seek to identify long term patterns of involvement in leisure time physical activity, and explore socioeconomic and demographic predictors of physical activity. The results are based on data from 2102 individuals aged 18-60 years in 1981 who also completed a follow-up questionnaire in 2002/04. The researchers conclude that there is a need for continued efforts to increase overall population levels of long term physical activity, particularly among socially disadvantaged groups with respect to income and education.
UK researchers looked at the almost 41 million people in England below retirement age and obtained individual death records for 366,348 people to determine the association between exposure to green space, income, all-cause mortality, and circulatory disease from 2001 to 2005. Physical environments that promote good health are important to reduce for circulatory disease and socioeconomic health inequalities. The study is published November 8th 2008 in The Lancet.
The Institute of Medicine will develop a framework for evidence-informed decision-making in obesity prevention efforts. It will focus on policy- and community-level interventions designed to influence food, eating, and physical activity environments.
Many adults may be meeting experts’ 30 minute recommendation on exercise if all types of activity, from work and play, are counted, a study of Swedish adults hints. Researchers found that among 1,470 adults ages 18 to 74, nearly two-thirds were meeting the goal of moderate physical activity on most days of the week. Getting more people off the couch, they say, will take broad “social-ecological approaches” which essentially means making it easier for people to be active in their daily lives. That could include making it simpler for people to walk or bike – by building more sidewalks, for instance – or giving them more parks and recreational areas.