Abstract
To reverse the global epidemic of physical inactivity that is responsible for more than 5 million deaths per year, many groups recommend creating “activity-friendly environments.” Such environments may have other benefits, beyond facilitating physical activity, but these potential co-benefits have not been well described. The purpose of the present paper is to explore a wide range of literature and conduct an initial summary of evidence on co-benefits of activity-friendly environments. An extensive but non-systematic review of scientific and “gray” literature was conducted. Five physical activity settings were defined: parks/open space/trails, urban design, transportation, schools, and workplaces/buildings. Several evidence-based activity-friendly features were identified for each setting. Six potential outcomes/co-benefits were searched: physical health, mental health, social benefits, safety/injury prevention, environmental sustainability, and economics. A total of 418 higher-quality findings were summarized. The overall summary indicated 22 of 30 setting by outcome combinations showed “strong” evidence of co-benefits. Each setting had strong evidence of at least three co-benefits, with only one occurrence of a net negative effect. All settings showed the potential to contribute to environmental sustainability and economic benefits. Specific environmental features with the strongest evidence of multiple co-benefits were park proximity, mixed land use, trees/greenery, accessibility and street connectivity, building design, and workplace physical activity policies/programs. The exploration revealed substantial evidence that designing community environments that make physical activity attractive and convenient is likely to produce additional important benefits. The extent of the evidence justifies systematic reviews and additional research to fill gaps.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12966-015-0188-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
Physical inactivity accounts for 5 million deaths annually worldwide [1]
Search areas Built environment attributes Specific built and social environment attributes in five settings that research had shown to be related to physical activity were identified and used to structure the search (Table 1)
There was good to strong evidence for the association between park presence/proximity and all co-benefits, except for economic benefits
Summary
Most people are not sufficiently active, and physical activity is declining in many countries [2]. This is a global problem with the biggest burden in low and middle income countries [3]. Physical activity has been engineered out of people’s lives through urban planning and transportation investments that favor travel by automobile, labor-saving devices at home and in the work place, and a proliferation. Many decisions affecting physical activity environments occur at the local government level. City council members, and other officials work every day to balance competing interests, they likely do not consider that environments supporting physical activity could produce additional benefits for their communities.
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