Although the health benefits of physical activity are well-established, the prevalence of insufficient physical activity among older adults is alarmingly high. Supporting older adults to engage in physically active lifestyles requires supporting environments. Recently, APH researchers have conducted a study examining the association of changes in neighborhood walkability with changes in walking activity in older adults.

Neighborhood walkability

Neighborhood walkability reflects the degree to which neighborhoods are conducive to walking activity. In the Geoscience and Health Cohort Consortium (GECCO), a Dutch geodata-infrastructure, neighborhood walkability indices for different years have been developed for all addresses in the Netherlands. These indices have been constructed by combining objectively measured high-resolution environmental data on population density, retail and service destination density, land use mix, street connectivity, green space density and sidewalk density.

Linkage of environmental data to cohort data

Erik Timmermans and Jeroen Lakerveld, both initiators of GECCO, have recently linked these neighbourhood walkability data to participants across three waves (2005/06, 2008/09 and 2011/12) of the Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam. Subsequently, the researchers have examined whether changes in neighbourhood walkability over time were associated with changes in walking activity in older adults, and whether this association differed by individual-level characteristics (i.e., age, sex, educational level, cognitive impairment, and mobility disability) and contextual conditions beyond the built environment (i.e., traffic noise, air pollution, and socioeconomic status).

No evidence

The study did not show evidence for an association between changes in neighbourhood walkability and changes in walking activity in older adults. The association of neighbourhood walkability with walking activity did not differ by individual-level characteristics and contextual conditions. Currently, efforts are made to replicate the approach with longitudinal data from a larger number of participants over a longer follow-up time, with more substantial environmental changes over time.

Publication

The study has been partly supported by a research grant from the Health Behaviors and Chronic Disease program of the Amsterdam Public Health research institute of Amsterdam UMC and a NWA Idea Generator research grant from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research. The study has been published in BMC Public Health.

Read the article (in Dutch) in the BMC Public Health.