Leisure-time physical activity, objective urban neighborhood built environment, and overweight and obesity of Chinese school-age children

Abstract

The prevalence of overweight and obesity in Chinese children and adolescents has a significant increase. This study aims to investigate the associations between objective urban neighborhood built environment, leisure-time physical activity, and overweight and obesity of Chinese school-age children between 6 and 13 years old. This study conducted surveys at thirty-two public elementary schools, evenly chosen from four strata of residential building density and located in 16 urban districts of Shanghai, China. A total of 719 completed surveys were collected between May 2015 and April 2016. There were 447 records geocoded to their home address. Objective neighborhood built environmental attributes were measured in 200-m and 400-m buffers of respondent's home using application programming interfaces provided by a Chinese web mapping services company. We found that active school commuters were more physically active than passive commuters. Distance from home to school and counts of restaurants in 400-meter buffer of a respondent's home were positively associated with school-age children's duration of leisure-time physical activity in a week. School-age children's BMI was negatively associated with their duration of leisure-time physical activity. This is one of first studies that quantified the association between objectively measured neighborhood built environmental attributes and children's leisure-time physical activity in China.