EUKN - European Urban Knowledge Network - The Role of Built Environments in Physical Activity, Eating, and Obesity in Childhood

The Role of Built Environments in Physical Activity, Eating, and Obesity in Childhood

Introduction

Over the past forty years various changes in the U.S. “built environment” have promoted inactive lifestyles and less healthy diets. James Sallis and Karen Glanz investigate whether these changes have had a direct effect on childhood obesity and whether improvements to encourage more physical activity and more healthful diets are likely to lower rates of childhood obesity.

Description

Any effort to understand or reduce obesity must consider the “built environment”. Loosely defined, the built environment consists of the neighbourhoods, roads, buildings, food sources, and recreational facilities in which people live, work, are educated, eat, and play.

The researchers support four obesity-related goals:

ensuring that all children have access to safe and convenient places to be physically active;
ensuring that the bulk of food available to children in most settings meets nutritional guidelines;
reducing promotion of unhealthy food and sedentary behaviours;
making it easy to identify and affordable to buy healthful foods.

Background information

Research into the link between the built environment and childhood obesity is still in its infancy. Analysts do not know for sure whether changes in the built environment have increased rates of obesity and whether improvements to the built environment will decrease them. Nevertheless, say Sallis and Glanz, the policy implications are clear. People who have access to safe places to be active, neighbourhoods that are walkable, and local markets that offer healthy food are likely to be more active and to eat better — two types of behaviour that lead to good health and help avoid obesity.

Methodology

When one studies the built environment in the context of the obesity epidemic, it is important to ask three questions.

How does the built environment affect important lifestyle decisions?
Would changing the infrastructure alter decisionmaking?
Would these changes affect Americans’ weight and overall health?

Conclusions

Few studies simultaneously address both physical activity and nutrition within neighbourhoods, though such work could advance understanding of how the built environment influences childhood obesity:

Community design is related to walking for transportation. Food outlets are among the most common destinations for walkers, incentives for offering more healthy choices at food stores could affect both healthy eating and physical activity. Neighbourhoods that have community gardens can promote both physical activity and healthful eating.
Drive-through windows at fast-food restaurants make food purchasing more convenient and encourage consumers to eat while they drive. Drive-through windows discourage pedestrian activity.
In socially cohesive neighbourhoods, parents are more comfortable letting their children play outdoors and walk or cycle to nearby stores for minor food-shopping errands.
Parental concerns about safety could keep children from taking advantage of walkable neighbourhoods, recreational facilities, and healthy food sources such as community gardens and farmers’ markets. Likewise, parents who are concerned about heavy or fast vehicular traffic are likely to restrict a child’s movements.
Unlike the often-transitory effects of motivational and educational approaches to addressing obesity, changes in behaviour prompted by changes in the built environment should be long lasting.

Contact info

The Future of Children

Publication date

01/04/2006

Researcher

J. Sallis and K. Glanz

Links

Future of Children

Read the research (PDF, Eng, 207 KB)

Document type

research

Themes

Urban Policy > Social inclusion & integration > Quality of life

Keywords

Health