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Researchers from Waseda University, the University of Calgary, and Tohoku University aim to understand how urban design could influence cardiovascular health. (Credit: Waseda University)<\/p><\/div>\n
Cardiovascular disease is a leading cause of death worldwide. According to the Global Burden of Disease Study, approximately 17.8 million people die from the disease each year. Some of the well-established risk factors of cardiovascular disease are diet, smoking and exercise, but recently, there has been a growing scientific and political interest in understanding how our neighborhoods are designed could help prevent cardiovascular disease.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know there is a link between certain neighborhood characteristics, such as good access to green spaces, and cardiovascular health,\u201d says Javad Koohsari<\/a>, an assistant professor in urban design and health at Waseda\u2019s Faculty of Sport Sciences. However, \u201chow and why neighborhood characteristics influence cardiovascular health are not well-established. We are trying to identify the pathways through which the built environment affects cardiovascular health,\u201d says Koohsari.<\/p>\n Koohsari has been working with Gavin McCormack<\/a>, an associate professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences at the University of Calgary; Tomoki Nakaya<\/a>, a professor at the Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Tohoku University; and Koichiro Oka<\/a>, a professor at the Faculty of Sport Sciences at Waseda to investigate this link between neighborhood characteristics and cardiovascular disease. In their commentary paper published in Nature Reviews Cardiology<\/em><\/a> on February 12, 2020, the team identified several key conceptual, methodological, and policy-relevant gaps in our current knowledge and proposed future directions to produce scientific evidence-based findings on the relationships between neighborhoods and cardiovascular disease.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have identified a total of eight issues which need to be addressed in order to produce robust evidence, one of them being the need to consider people\u2019s daily mobility and activity spaces,\u201d Oka explains. \u201cPeople are exposed to different places at different times of the day, so we could use a global positioning system points and ecological momentary assessments to where and when or how often people are exposed to risk factors of cardiovascular disease.\u201d<\/p>\n Koohsari says, \u201cThough we must not let urban design and public health policy get ahead of \u2018science,\u2019 we hope that future studies will answer several of the key questions on how to design or redesign built environments to prevent cardiovascular diseases and promote healthier communities.\u201d<\/p>\n Journal:<\/strong> Nature Reviews Cardiology<\/em> A team of researchers from Waseda University, the University of Calgary, and Tohoku University has been workin […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":73339,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[81,117],"tags":[358,178],"class_list":["post-73338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-topic","tag-pressrelease-en","tag-research-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/top\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/top\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/top\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/top\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/top\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73338"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/top\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73338\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73340,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/top\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73338\/revisions\/73340"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/top\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/top\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/top\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/top\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Reference<\/h2>\n
\nTitle of original article:<\/strong> Neighbourhood built environment and cardiovascular disease: knowledge and future directions<\/a>
\nAuthors:<\/strong> Mohammad Javad Koohsari (Waseda University), Gavin R. McCormack (University of Calgary), Tomoki Nakaya (Tohoku University), Koichiro Oka (Waseda University)
\nDOI:<\/strong> 10.1038\/s41569-020-0343-6
\nLink to original article:<\/strong> https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41569-020-0343-6?draft=collection<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"