Health, Physical Activity and Rural Environments

Diabetes and obesity are two major health issues in the US, especially in rural places. Physical activity is among the many contributing factors to these diseases and is often related to a person's built and natural... [ view full abstract ]

Diabetes and obesity are two major health issues in the US, especially in rural places. Physical activity is among the many contributing factors to these diseases and is often related to a person's built and natural environment. These health outcomes, healthy behaviors, and the built and natural environment vary across space at every from national to local scale. Given this geographic variation, this research aims to determine which of these aspects of the the built and natural environment are associated with which health outcomes, when controlling for other factors. Environmental factors considered include county economic activity, rank in the urban influence hierarchy, natural amenity availability, and walkability. To supplement these county-level findings, this project includes a local-scale survey of residents of Addison County. This survey illustrates the extent to which people in one given rural county engage in physical activity and what kinds, as well as what they perceive to be the environmental factors that motivate or inhibit their physical activity. Survey results are analyzed by demographic characteristics.