 | The 131st Annual Meeting (November 15-19, 2003) of APHA |
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| The 131st Annual Meeting (November 15-19, 2003) of APHA |
Reid Ewing, PhD, National Center for Smart Growth, University of Maryland, c/o 1439 Monroe St. NW, Washington, D.C., DC 20010, (202) 641-1163, barbara@bmccann.net
It is frequently asserted that the design of U.S. communities in the post WWII period has "engineered" physical activity out of our daily lives and contributed to the growing prevalence of obesity and related chronic health problems in the U.S. population. Yet, until now, evidence supporting this assertion has been circumstantial and anecdotal. In this session, results of the first nationwide, quantitative study of urban sprawl and its health effects will be presented. The study, published in the September 2003 special issue of the American Journal of Health Promotion, linked individual physical activity and health records for more 200,000 Americans to measures of urban sprawl for their counties of residence. Controlling for individual covariates including gender, age, race, education, and fruit/vegetable consumption, urban sprawl had small but statistically significant relationships to minutes of leisure-time walking, body mass index, and the likelihood of being obese and suffering from hypertension. Limitations of this first study, and guidelines for future studies that are more tightly controlled for confounding factors, will be discussed.
Learning Objectives:
Keywords: Urban Health, Environment
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.