BACKGROUND The present study aimed to describe the perception of safety from crime in the neighborhood and to evaluate its association with leisure-time and transport-related physical activity in adults. METHODS A cross-sectional population based study was conducted in the urban area of Pelotas, Brazil, in 2012. Perceived insecurity from crime in the neighborhood was measured using the Neighb...

BACKGROUND The study aimed to investigate if psychosocial factors moderate the association between objective walkability and different domains of children's physical activity (PA). A second aim of the study was to investigate the direct associations between psychosocial factors and children's PA. Based on previous literature, it was hypothesized that walkability would be more strongly related t...

The health of patients with chronic diseases is affected not only by factors such as eating and living habits, but also the neighborhood built environment, travel conditions. Using 18 blocks in main urban area Changshu, China, we performed structural equation modelling, to explore relationships between commuting patterns diseases, patient health. We first divided into four categories—walking/bi...

OBJECTIVE To estimate the prevalence of the practice of leisure-time physical activity in older adults and to analyze its association with environment perception. METHODS Cross-sectional population study conducted from September 2009 to June 2010 with 1.656 individuals aged 60 years or older, living in the urban zone of the city of Florianópolis, Southern Brazil. Leisure-time physical activit...

BACKGROUND Public parks can be an important setting for physical activity promotion, but to increase park use and the activity levels of park users, the crucial attributes related to active park use need to be defined. Not only user characteristics and structural park attributes, but also characteristics of the surrounding neighborhood are important to examine. Furthermore, internationally comp...

BACKGROUND Neighborhood walkability has been shown to be associated with walking behavior. However, the availability of geographical data necessary to construct it remains a limitation. Building on the concept of space syntax, we propose an alternative walkability index, space syntax walkability (SSW). This study examined associations of the full walkability index and SSW with walking for trans...

INTRODUCTION Macro level built environment factors (eg, street connectivity, walkability) are correlated with physical activity. Less studied but more modifiable microscale elements of the environment (eg, crosswalks) may also affect physical activity, but short audit measures of microscale elements are needed to promote wider use. This study evaluated the relation of a 15-item neighborhood env...

BACKGROUND Neighborhood attractiveness and safety may encourage physical activity and help individuals maintain a healthy weight. However, these neighborhood characteristics may not be equally relevant to health across all settings and population subgroups. PURPOSE To evaluate whether potentially attractive neighborhood features are associated with lower BMI, whether safety hazards are associ...