Built environment and health

Abstract

In the last decade, there has been a growing research interest in the influence of the built environment on physical activity and diet. The focus on the built environment and health behaviors related to energy balance has arisen from two aspects of public health and urban/suburban development: concern over trends in the prevalence of obesity and efforts from the planning and public health communities to link neighborhood characteristics to physical activity and diet. Preventive Medicine has been a leading forum for studies of associations between the built environment and health and this issue continues and extends this tradition with a diverse and absorbing collection of 20 articles. Most of the articles in this issue address active transportation, a topic with implications for policy concerning public health, climate change, and energy resources. This issue also examines physical activity-related methodological questions and topics related to the food environment. Several articles point to significant gaps in the literature such as reliance on participant perceptions of physical activity and safety environments, and scarce data concerning diverse populations, less developed countries, and the food environments of seniors. Ideas for future research are scattered throughout the issue and these ideas are likely to foreshadow much new work. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)