Habitat Matters: ‘Walkable’ Communities May Make Elders Healthier

Some of a neighborhood’s features — the length of its blocks, how many grocery stores or restaurants are nearby — may be more than selling points for real estate agents. A new study suggests such factors may work to beat back obesity in older people by increasing a neighborhood’s “walkability.”

The findings by University of Washington and Group Health Cooperative researchers involved more than 900 elderly Group Health members living in Seattle and King County. The results could have broad implications for public health and planning officials throughout the United States, where obesity has been called an epidemic and as baby boomers start to retire.
Researchers compared the study participants’ self-reported walking behavior with geographic information relating to the location of their residences, as well as some 200 directly observable neighborhood attributes, including parks, streets and foot-and-bike trails, land slope and traffic. Researchers concluded that the chief factors contributing to an area’s walkability were higher residential density and clusters of destinations such as grocery stores, restaurants and other services.

Science Daily