Active Living Research in Light of the TRB/IOM Report.

Abstract

Most of the papers in this issue speak, one way or another, to the question of how physical activity is, or might be, related to the built environment. This question was at the heart of a recent National Research Council (NRC) study, which culminated in the report, Does the Built Environment Influence Physical Activity?: Examining the Evidence. The study was motivated by deep concern, especially within the public health community, about the lack of sufficient participation in physical activity among Americans and by curiosity about the extent to which changes to the built environment might help to increase levels of activity. The NRC study highlighted the pressing need for research along several lines if the built environment-physical activity relationship is to be understood sufficiently well to know if and how changes in the built environment might effect large-enough changes in population-level physical activity to be worth the cost of making such changes. My goals in this brief commentary are first, to provide an overview of the NRC study and its recommendations and second, to assess the ways in which the papers in this issue help to close the research gaps that the NRC study identified.