How are the built environment and household travel characteristics associated with children's active transport in Melbourne, Australia?
Section snippets
Background
Regular physical activity during childhood is beneficial for bone mineral density (Christoffersen et al., 2015, Strong et al., 2005), as well as reduced prevalence of overweight/obesity and risk factors for cardiovascular disease (Strong et al., 2005, WHO, 2010). Consequently, health authorities worldwide recommend that school-aged children engage in at least 60 min of physical activity of moderate-to-vigorous intensity per day (Australian Government Department of Health, 2014, WHO, 2010).
Sample
The sample was derived from 46,562 people from 18,152 households, who responded in 2012–16 to the Victorian Integrated Survey of Travel and Activity (VISTA), a cross-sectional household travel survey of a stratified, clustered random sample of residents in private households in Mesh Blocks2
Statistical analysis
ArcGIS 10.4 (ESRI, 2016, Redlands, CA) software was used for spatial analysis and STATA 14.2 (StataCorp, 2015, College Station, Texas) was used for descriptive and statistical analysis.
Descriptive analysis involved tabulation of sample characteristics. Associations between built environment, household travel behaviours and the two AT outcomes were tested by fitting multilevel multivariable regression models. Initially, two separate sets of models were fitted for each outcome. The first fitted
Results
Descriptive data for all children (N = 1024; 50% male) and their households (n = 713) are presented in Table 1. Most children (86%) had at least one adult carrer in full-time employment, 12% lived in households with very low income, 9% in sole parent households and 26% in households with one car or less. Overall, 39% of children used AT to school (35% walked, 4% cycled) and 24% accrued 20 min of PA via AT daily. Few (0.2%) used public transport. Among those who used motorized transport to
Discussion
This study is, to our knowledge, among the first to investigate, using separate and fully adjusted models, associations of objective measures of the built environment around home and school, and self-reported travel behaviour of household members travelling to and from school (accompaniment, trip chaining and accessibility of work), with children's AT to school and their accrual of PA via AT throughout the day. We found that built environment factors, including distance to and walkability
Conclusions
This study provides important evidence for urban planners, policy-makers and health promotion practitioners of how both the built environment and travel behaviours of household members are related to children's AT. Our findings demonstrate that in order to increase AT to school (and transport-related PA) it is worth investing in infrastructure designed to improve walkability around schools. This should be coupled with campaigns that target whole households to promote age-appropriate independent
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to acknowledge:
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Dr. Jan Scheurer for providing access to Spatial Network Analysis for Multi-Modal Urban Transport Systems (SNAMUTS) data.
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Dr. Koen Simons for his contribution of advice on statistical analysis.
Funding
This study is funded by an Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Project Grant (LP140100680), in partnership with the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation (VicHealth), the Victorian Department of Economic Development, Jobs, Transport and Resources (DEDJTR), and the Victorian Roads Corporation (VicRoads). The contents of this manuscript are the responsibility of the authors and do not reflect the views of the funding bodies.
SM is supported by an National Health and Medical Research Council (
Data statement
We do not wish to make the data available at this stage as we are still using the data for other analyses. However, VISTA data are available at: https://transport.vic.gov.au/data-and-research/vista/vista-data-and-publications/.
Conflict of interest
None.
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