Grant: Project Grant

Cardiovascular diseases, cancer, and mental health issues are among the major causes of morbidity and mortality in Canada and create a heavy burden on individuals and society. Many cases could be prevented if a greater number of Canadians adopted healthy eating and physical activity. Existing research shows that health promotion programs aimed at individuals and transformations of built and social environments could help Canadians adopt more healthy lifestyles if implemented jointly. In order to implement health promotion programs and transformations of built environments to promote healthy eating and physical activity, public health officials, governments, and their partners require a keen understanding of their potential reach and acceptability by populations. Right now however, little is known about how willing populations are to participating in health promotion programs. Further, it is unclear to what extent populations are supportive of changes to the built and social environments that might make healthy eating and physical activity easier lifestyle choices. We propose to conduct surveys of adults living in the 21 largest urban areas in Canada in order to discover the potential reach of health promotion programs, to learn more about the acceptability of transforming local built and social environments, and to understand how potential reach and acceptability are associated with different socioeconomic and health characteristics. The survey data will be linked to geographic information about the services and amenities available in the vicinity of the survey participants' homes and workplaces. This will allow the team to better understand where to invest in unfolding health promotion programs, where to mobilize communities about healthy lifestyle issues, and what issues require advocacy on the part of public health officials. We plan extensive dissemination activities to share the information with public health officials and the public in general.