Associations between Children's Physical Activity and Neighborhood Environments Using GIS: A Secondary Analysis from a Systematic Scoping Review

Development, scoring, and reliability for the Microscale Audit of Pedestrian Streetscapes for Safe Routes to School (MAPS-SRTS) instrument

BACKGROUND

Active commuting to school can be a meaningful contributor to overall physical activity in children. To inform better micro-level urban design near schools that can support active commuting to school, there is a need for measures that capture these elements. This paper describes the adaptation of an observational instrument for use in assessing micro-scale environments around urban elementary schools in the United States.

METHODS

The Micro-scale Audit of Pedestrian Streetscapes for Safe Routes to School (MAPS-SRTS) was developed from existing audit instruments not designed for school travel environments and modifications for the MAPS-SRTS instrument include the structure of the audit tool sections, the content, the observation route, and addition of new subscales. Subscales were analyzed for inter-rater reliability in a sample of 36 schools in Austin, TX. To assess reliability for each subscale, one-way random effects single-measure intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) were used.

RESULTS

Compared to the 30 original subscales, the adapted MAPS-SRTS included 26 (86.6%) subscales with revised scoring algorithms. Most MAPS-SRTS subscales had acceptable inter-rater reliability, with an ICC of 0.97 for the revised audit tool.

CONCLUSIONS

The MAPS-SRTS audit tool is a reliable instrument for measuring the school travel environment for research and evaluation purposes, such as assessing human-scale determinants of active commuting to school behavior and documenting built environment changes from infrastructure interventions.

Protective effect of restorative possibilities on cognitive function and mental health in children and adolescents: A scoping review including the role of physical activity

Background The exposome approach can be a powerful tool for understanding the intertwining of social, physical, and internal influences that shape mental health and cognitive development throughout childhood. To distil conceptual models for subsequent analyses, the EU-funded project Early Environmental quality and Life-course mental health effects (Equal-Life) has conducted literature reviews on potential mediators linking the exposome to these outcomes. We report on a scoping review and a conceptual model of the role of restorative possibilities and physical activity. Methods Peer-reviewed studies published since the year 2000 in English, on the association between the exposome and mental health/cognition in children/adolescents, and quantitatively investigating restoration/restorative quality as a mediating variable were considered. Database searches were last updated in December 2022. We used an unstructured expert-driven approach to fill in gaps in the reviewed literature. Results Five records of three distinct studies were identified, indicating a scarcity of empirical evidence in this newly developing research area. Not only were these studies few in numbers, but also cross-sectional, lending only tentative support to the idea that perceived restorative quality of adolescent's living environment might mediate the association between greenspace and mental health. Physical activity emerged as a mediator leading to better psychological outcomes in restorative environments. We provide a critical discussion of potential caveats when investigating the restoration mechanism in children and propose a hierarchical model including restoration, physical activity, and relational dynamics between children and their environment, including social context, as well as restorative environments other than nature. Conclusions It is justified to further explore the role of restoration and physical activity as mediators in the association between early-life exposome and mental health/cognitive development. It is important to consider the child perspective and specific methodological caveats. Given the evolving conceptual definitions/operationalizations, Equal-Life will attempt to fill in a critical gap in the literature.

Associations between the built environment and emotional, social and physical indicators of early child development across high and low socioeconomic neighbourhoods

Emerging evidence indicates that the built environment influences early child development. Access to, and the quality of, built environment features vary with the socioeconomic status (SES) of neighbourhoods. It has not yet been established whether the association between built environment features and early child development varies by neighbourhood SES. We sought to identify built environment features associated with neighbourhood-level variations in the early child development domains of physical health and wellbeing, social competence, and emotional maturity, and how these associations differ among high and low SES neighbourhoods where child development patterns follow expected outcomes ("on-diagonal" neighbourhoods) and where child development patterns differ from expected outcomes ("off-diagonal" neighbourhoods). This cross-sectional study analysed data from the Australian Early Development Census (AEDC) for children residing in 3839 neighbourhoods in the Perth and Peel metropolitan areas of Western Australia. Children's AEDC scores were aggregated at the area-level and merged with Geographic Information Systems derived measures of neighbourhood residential density, parks, walkability, community facilities and public transport. Multivariate logistic regressions modelled the odds of low and high SES neighbourhoods having a higher proportion of children developmentally "on-track" (scores in the 26th to 100th percentile of the AEDC) or "not on-track" (scores in the bottom 25th percentile of the AEDC) for each built environment feature. In high SES neighbourhoods, better development across all three domains was associated with greater residential density and improved access to parks, public transport, learning, childcare and health services. Conversely, in low SES neighbourhoods, greater residential density was associated with better physical, but poorer social and emotional development; increased traffic and street connectivity were associated with poorer physical and emotional development; shorter distances to parks, learning, childcare and health services were associated with poorer physical and emotional development; and more services and public transport stops were associated with poorer emotional development. The mixed findings in low SES neighbourhoods suggest that positive associations with built environment features seen in one domain of early child development may be negative in other domains. The reasons for the mixed findings in low SES neighbourhoods are likely multifactorial and may include parental neighbourhood perceptions, as well as quality and usage of built environment features. These findings can be used to inform state and local governments to establish child-friendly town planning and urban design features. Further research is needed to confirm the interplay between SES, early child development, the built environment and other unmeasured factors to better inform public health policy.