Walkable Neighborhoods Could Lower Cardiovascular Disease Risk

Healthcare Walkable Neighborhoods Could Lower Cardiovascular Disease Risk Anuradha Varanasi Contributor Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. Anuradha writes about environmental health disparities & epidemiology Following New! Follow this author to stay notified about their latest stories. Got it! Oct 31, 2022, 02:00pm EDT | New! Click on the conversation bubble to join the conversation Got it! Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin (HR) People walk across the bridge near Little Raven Court in downtown Denver.

Realtors in and . . .

[+] around the Denver metro area are marketing real estate on a walkability rating meaning how walkable is the neighborhood to work, to restaurnants and parks, to neighbors. Some of the more walkable neighborhoods in Denver are Highland, Cherry Creek and LoDo. Helen H.

Richardson/The Denver Post (Photo By Helen H. Richardson/The Denver Post via Getty Images) Denver Post via Getty Images According to the American Heart Association , cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death not only in the U. S.

but also globally. To make matters worse, less than 1 in 4 adults in the U. S.

get the recommended amount of exercise or physical activity, that includes at least 150 minutes per week of moderate intensity activity or 75 minutes of intense physical activity (for example, aerobics). Two preliminary or emerging studies have found that a neighborhood’s walkability — that measures how safe and convenient it is to walk from your house to the grocery store, pharmacy, church, or school — is associated with individuals’ cardiovascular disease risk and burden. Both of the studies’ findings will be presented at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions in Chicago from November 5 to November 7, 2022.

“When a person’s environment is conducive to walking, there is a greater likelihood of engagement in physical activity such as walking,” said Elizabeth A. Jackson, former chair of the American Heart Association’s Committee in a press release. “Ample data support the cardiovascular benefits of regular physical activity including walking, therefore, designing neighborhoods to be walkable may assist residents in improving their cardiovascular health.

” The researchers conducted a nationwide study where they analyzed more than 70,000 U. S, census tracts to determine how neighborhoods’ walkability may help in reducing residents’ cardiovascular disease risk. Lead author, Issam Motairek, a research associate at the University Hospital Cleveland Medical Center and colleagues, delved into the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s PLACES dataset that closely monitors the prevalence of coronary artery disease in the U.

S. Along with that, the data also includes significant cardiovascular disease risks like high cholesterol, obesity, high blood pressure, and type 2 diabetes. They then matched this large-scale health data along with additional data from the Environmental Protection Agency’s smart location database to compartmentalize census tracts into four levels of walkability — ranging from most to least walkable.

MORE FOR YOU Why The Rock’s Social Media Muscle Made Him Hollywood’s Highest-Paid Actor Not So Quiet On The Western Front: Remembering The Activism of Universal Pictures’ Carl Laemmle Why Wall Street Stock Predictions Are Meant To Be Wrong The researchers then found that in the most walkable neighborhoods, cardiovascular disease prevalence was only 5. 4% but that shot up to 7% in the least walkable neighborhoods. Around 36% of the adults had blood pressure, obesity, or high cholesterol in these least walkable areas.

Whereas in the most walkable communities, it was 30% among adults. “The way communities are designed is increasingly recognized to have an important role in cardiovascular disease and its risk factors,” said Motairek in a press release. ”Walkability is a neighborhood metric reflecting how easy it is to walk in that neighborhood.

Whether walking to stores, jobs or local parks, a walkable neighborhood encourages people to be more physically active and helps them stay healthy. ” The second study was conducted in Houston where researchers mainly studied the city’s walkability. And how a far more walkable environment in the major city is associated with cardiovascular disease risk factors.

They evaluated data of more than 900,000 adults in the Houston Methodist Cardiovascular Disease Learning Health System Registry from 2016 to 2021. The average age of the participants was 52 years and more than half of them were women. The researchers then obtained a “walk score” for each of Houston’s neighborhoods that ranged from 0 to 100.

They categorized the walk scores into four categories that gave low scores to neighborhoods that entirely depend on cars for running basic errands. So far, their study has revealed that for residents who did not have any prior cardiovascular disease, by simply living in a walkable area, their risk factors are twice as likely to be optimal as opposed to those who live in car-dependant neighborhoods. The good news is also that people who have cardiovascular disease can also benefit from living in higher walkability areas.

Researches found that they had 58% higher odds of having an optimal cardiovascular risk profile, compared to their counterparts who live in areas that are not walkable. “We found that living in a very walkable area may protect against cardiovascular risk factors among people who have cardiovascular disease and those who do not,” said lead study author Omar M. Makram from Houston Methodist Hospital in a press release.

“While analyzing this data, we were surprised to observe that almost half of the population in our registry lives in areas that ranked as the least walkable, completely car-dependent, neighborhoods. ” Follow me on Twitter . Anuradha Varanasi Editorial Standards Print Reprints & Permissions.