Natalie Colabianchi

Stroke risk may be affected by the level of development in a neighborhood, which may in turn affect access to health-promoting environmental features, or exposure to noise and air pollution. This study investigated development intensity as a potential influence on stroke risk, using data from the United States Geological Survey National Land Cover Database (NLCD). We tested associations between development intensity and incident stroke among 25,330 adult participants in the REasons for Geographic And Racial Differences in Stroke study. We measured development intensity in 8-km network buffers around participants’ residential locations (34,368 locations). A proportional hazards model controlled for demographic characteristics and stroke risk factors. Approximately half (52.0%) of the participants were 45 to 64 years of age, 54.9% were female, and 40.2% reported their race as Black. Median time in the study was 10.7 years. Average development intensity at baseline was −2.9. During the 2003 to 2017 study period, 1319 participants (5.2%) had an incident stroke. Exposure to greater development intensity was associated with reduced incident stroke risk (HR 0.975, 95% CI: 0.95–0.99). This study demonstrated the influence of development intensity on stroke risk. Further work is needed to understand the specific environmental features by which development intensity affects stroke risk.

Objective: This study explored the differences in perceptions of workplace culture of health, physical activity (PA), psychological well-being, and work productivity among three workforce settings. Methods: A mixed methods study design was utilized, including data from a questionnaire ( n = 520) and from interviews ( n = 20). Quantitative data was analyzed using descriptive statistics, and multivariate analysis of variance, while qualitative data was analyzed using thematic content analysis. Results: Onsite employees had higher levels of total PA than both hybrid and remote employees ( P < 0.05). Additionally, hybrid employees reported higher levels of self-acceptance than both onsite and remote employees ( P < 0.05). Qualitative findings highlighted remote work’s autonomy and flexibility, leadership’s role, and work-from-home challenges. Conclusions: Remote and hybrid work is associated with both positive and negative well-being outcomes.

Health equity remains one of the most pressing challenges in public health, with significant inequities in health outcomes across various social, economic, and demographic lines. Factors such as socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity, gender, and geographic location often determine access to health care, healthy environments, and opportunities to engage in sport and physical activity. These inequities contribute to an increased risk of chronic diseases, poorer mental health, and reduced quality of life in marginalized populations. This paper explores the potential of sport and physical activity as powerful tools to address these persistent health inequities and support broader social change through an interdisciplinary approach. By leveraging insights from various disciplines including public health, sociology, psychology, education, epigenetics, and sport sciences (kinesiology) to form an interdisciplinary lens, this paper aims to highlight how sport and physical activity can not only reduce health inequities but also serve as catalysts for broader societal transformations.

This study aims to investigate the persistence of sedentary behaviors from early childhood to adolescence and the longitudinal association between neighborhood social and physical environments and childhood sedentary behaviors. Using the Future of Families & Child Wellbeing Study (N = 2716), we conducted a cross-lagged path analysis to examine the longitudinal association between neighborhood social and physical environments (neighborhood socioeconomic status, observed physical disorder, and crime rates) and sedentary behaviors at subsequent measurement points, after controlling for demographic factors and family socioeconomic status. We observed the continuity of sedentary behaviors in early childhood, extending throughout adolescence. Neighborhood socioeconomic status was significantly associated with sedentary behaviors at subsequent measurement points from early childhood to adolescence. Observation-based physical disorder and crime rates were associated with engagement in greater sedentary behaviors in adolescence but not in early and middle childhood. We also observed a partial mediation effect of neighborhood physical disorder and crime rates in the association between neighborhood socioeconomic status and sedentary behaviors in adolescence. Our results demonstrated the importance of early childhood in shaping healthy behaviors and highlighted the contribution of unfavorable environments to sedentary behaviors. These findings call for the need to support disadvantaged neighborhoods, particularly by addressing safety concerns and physical disorder, for promoting physical activity and reducing sedentary behaviors among adolescents.

Background: There is currently a nationwide effort to bring parks and green spaces within a 10-minute walk of the home. We examined the association between park area within 1 km of a child’s residence and self-reported park-specific physical activity (PA) along with accelerometer-derived moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA). Methods: A subsample of K through eighth-grade youth (n = 493) from the Healthy Communities Study reported whether they engaged in park-specific PA during the last 24 hours and wore an accelerometer for up to 7 days. Park area was defined as the percentage of park land in a 1 km Euclidean buffer around the participant’s residence, categorized into quintiles. Analysis consisted of logistic and linear regression modeling with interaction effects that controlled for clustering within communities. Results: Regression models estimated greater park-specific PA for participants in the fourth and fifth quintiles of park land. Age, sex, race ethnicity, and family income were unrelated to park-specific PA. Accelerometer analysis indicated that total MVPA was unrelated to park area. Older children (β = −8.73, P < .001) and girls (β = −13.44, P < .001) engaged in less MVPA. Seasonality significantly predicted both park-specific PA and total MVPA. Conclusion: Increasing park area is likely to improve youth PA patterns, lending support for the 10-minute walk initiative.