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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Yaolin Weng, MS and Thomas Farley. Community Health Science, Tulane University, 1440 Canal Street, # 2300, New Olreans, LA 70112, 832-814-5634, yaoweng@hotmail.com

Walking is an easy and convenient way to meet physical activity recommendation. However, not many papers report prevalence and correlates of different types of walking. The purpose of this paper is to describe the prevalence and correlates of self-reported exercise-related walking and utility-related walking (includes household, transportation, or occupation purpose) among 3137 New Orleanians who participated in the 2004 BRFSS survey. Thirty-five percent of subjects in this group were reported doing some (at least 3 days per week) exercise-related walking while 48.3% were doing some utility-related walking. These who reported exercise walking were about 5 times more likely to report utility walking. Respondents more likely to do either kind of walking were male, current unemployed, never married, non-obese, no-smokers, and drinkers. Utility walking decreased with age (from 51.5% in age 18-24 to 31.8% in age 55-64), but exercise walking did not show the same pattern (53.8% in age 18-24 while 48.5% in age 55-64). Utility walking also decreased with income level (from 44.7% to 26.0%), but not exercise walking. TV watching time was not found to be related to neither exercise nor utility walking. Perception of the importance of taking walks was significantly positive related to both exercise and utility walking. Self-reported perceived accessibility to walk and to grocery shopping were only related to exercise walking rather than utility walking. Self-reported neighborhood safety was not related to either exercise or utility walking. Identifying these variables could have implications for more effective targeting to promote various types of walking.

Learning Objectives:

• describe current prevalence and correlates of exercise-related walking and utility-related walking among a metropolitan city from a national surveillance survey

Keywords: Environment, Obesity

Related Web page: www.cdc.gov/brfss

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Not Answered