Grant: Foundation Grant

Creating health supportive environments has the potential to improve population-level health, including increasing physical activity participation in Canadian adults. Findings from previous studies suggest that urban planning policies that inform the design of the neighbourhood built environment are associated with physical activity behaviour. These previous findings have had, for the most part, a positive impact on current urban planning policy and practice however, these studies have several major methodological issues, one of which includes the over-reliance on cross-sectional designs that do not allow the temporal direction of associations between the built environment and physical activity to be established. These studies have also typically relied on self-reported measures of physical activity that can over-estimate physical activity levels. Moreover, there is a lack of evidence on the economic value of creating physical activity-supportive neighbourhood environments. Building on my previous research, I will lead a research program that will deliver rigorous causal and economic evidence in a form that can be used by policymakers to create better built environments that support health for all individuals regardless of their socioeconomic circumstances or life-stage. This 5-year research program will: 1) Characterize the relations between neighbourhood design and physical activity, and; 2) Generate evidence on the economic value of neighbourhood design to inform physical activity-supportive urban policies. This research will incorporate natural experimentation with mixed methods and economic analyses, and will advance previous research on neighbourhood design and physical activity by using recent technological advances in physical activity and built environment assessment. The research findings will inform economically sound evidence-based urban policy to improve population health by reconfiguring neighbourhood design to support physical activity.