2025

The evidence linking urban greenspace to individual’s physical activity (PA) levels is mixed. This study examines relationships between street-level and satellite-derived greenspace measures with PA outcomes. Our sample included 7855 adult twins enrolled in the Washington State Twin Registry from 2009 to 2020 living in urban areas; 14,095 total survey observations were analyzed. We applied […]

Introduction: Research has focused on the built environment (e.g., neighborhood walkability) that supports or hinders physical activity because it is potentially modifiable. This study investigated the associations between changes in neighborhood walkability and changes in physical activity in an adult twin cohort. Methods: Longitudinal data (2009-2020) from 7,439 identical and fraternal twins comprising 2,800 complete pairs from […]

Background: Addressing key behavioral risk factors for chronic diseases, such as diet, requires innovative methods to objectively measure dietary patterns and their upstream determinants, notably the food environment. Although GIS techniques have pushed the boundaries by mapping food outlet availability, they often simplify food access dynamics to the vicinity of home addresses, possibly misclassifying neighborhood effects. […]

We investigated associations between neighborhood walkability and physical activity using twins (5477 monozygotic and same-sex dizygotic pairs) as “quasi-experimental” controls of genetic and shared environment (familial) factors that would otherwise confound exposure-outcome associations. Walkability comprised intersection density, population density, and destination accessibility. Outcomes included self-reported weekly minutes of neighborhood walking and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) […]

Background: Outdoor physical activity (PA) is an important component of overall health; however, it is difficult to measure. Passively collected smartphone location data like Google Location History (GLH) present an opportunity to address this issue. Objectives: To evaluate the use of GLH data for measuring outdoor PA. Methods: We collected GLH data for 357 individuals from the Washington […]