Advancing Urban Sustainability and Population Health Through Data Insights

The GeoSDH Group was very pleased to host approximately 40 professors, students, and academic staff for “Urban Sustainability and Population Health: Turning Data into Insights”. The meeting brought people together from several disciplines—including epidemiology, computer science, geography, human kinetics, sociology—and five Canadian universities to discuss how to use data better for neighbourhood environmental research. The topic complemented ongoing research at McGill and in Canada on urban sustainability and machine learning.

Recap from “Urban sustainability and population health: turning data into insights” meeting

Three Themes at the Core of the Meeting:

Social support in sustainable neighbourhoods: Healthy, sustainable neighbourhoods imply a social sustainability – they are welcoming to newcomers, provide housing options that are affordable to families across the life cycle, and provide healthy food options locally

Structural support in sustainable neighbourhoods: Healthy, sustainable neighbourhoods have structural features that support active living and low-carbon mobility, green space that can act as a carbon sink and provide cooling in warmer seasons, and offer air quality measures that never exceed WHO standards

Turning data into insights for population health: Healthy, sustainable neighbourhoods have structural features that support active living and low-carbon mobility, green space that can act as a carbon sink and provide cooling in warmer seasons, and offer air quality measures that never exceed WHO standards.

S. Mah awarded jack tu student prize – honourable mention at IPDNL conference

Geo-SDH group member and PhD Candidate S. Mah has recently returned from a productive visit to Banff, where she presented her research at the 2018 International Population Data Linkage Conference. S. Mah presented her Canadian evidence on “Neighbourhood built environments as correlates of hospital burden and premature mortality in Canada“, as well as preliminary results from an “International comparison in walkable environments and hospital burden in type 2 diabetes patients“. For her international comparison research, S. Mah received the Jack Tu Student Prize – Honourable Mention. The initial results from this research indicate that residents living favourable active living environments (or more ‘walkable’ neighbourhoods) in both Wales and Canada experience lower ‘ever’ hospitialization rates.

Public Policy Symposium

Presentation at the Trottier Institute for Science and Public Policy Symposium

Presentation at the Trottier Institute

The Geo-SDH Group was in attendance at the annual Trottier Institute of Science and Public Policy Symposium, where Dr. N. Ross spoke about the Geo-SDH Group’s policy-relevant research of active living environments.

Dr. Ross addressed the question: “Does the neighbourhood you live in get under your skin?” touched on the group’s recent findings that residents of neighbourhoods that support active living show more optimal markers of lab-assessed cardiometabolic health, including lower BMI, blood pressure & total cholesterol. Dr. Ross also covered the importance of developing, understanding, and disseminating health environment measures and presented new findings from their Can-ALE dataset.

These findings show exposure to active living environments raise physical activity levels in target populations vulnerable to chronic disease or sedentary behaviour, such as older adults or adults with a less physically active occupation. This finding complements Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer’s call to policy communities to identify practices to build and modify communities to support active transportation and physical activity.

Dr. Ross also addressed the group’s ongoing research of negative environmental conditions associated with active living environments, including exposure to air pollution and higher ambient air temperatures. These adverse environmental exposures, which are patterned geographically, may work to reduce walking in populations and should also be addressed through policy (e.g., investments in municipal tree canopies).

New report on an active environment and premature cardiometabolitic mortality

Report on Active Lifestyle

The article "Active Lifestyle, Physical Activity, and Premature Cardiometabolic Mortality in Canada: A Nationwide Cohort Study" examines and reveals important associations between active lifestyle (ALE), physical activity, and premature cardiometabolic mortality.

They used linked administrative data from nearly 250,000 respondents from the Canadian Community Health Survey and death registries in the Canadian Mortality Database to conduct a retrospective population-based cohort study.

This rich set of linked data contains information on social and demographic characteristics, as well as health behaviors of the cohort – including physical activity and leisure-time walking. These people's neighborhoods were then linked to the Canadian Active Living Environment (Can-ALE) database to see if living in communities more conducive to active living was associated with physical activity, walking and premature death. cardiometabolic death.

The authors examined the relationships between active lifestyles, physical activity, and premature cardiometabolic death. The cohort was stratified by gender as well as by age group (older, middle-aged). To estimate premature death, different follow-up periods were used to account for differences in life expectancy between women (life expectancy ~85 years) and men (~81 years) in Canada.

The results showed that, on average, people tended to walk more in affluent neighborhoods and that more walking was associated with lower premature cardiometabolic death (except for middle-aged men in this study).

Survival analysis showed that more favorable ALEs were associated with a 22% reduction in premature cardiometabolic mortality in older women.

The built environment is of great importance in shaping both behavior and downstream health. Urban planning that prioritizes quality active living environments can be an effective way to promote physical activity and reduce premature cardiometabolic death. Research suggests that decision makers seeking to improve health outcomes in their communities should consider supporting interventions aimed at making neighborhoods more conducive to active living.

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