Question

What role does the 'built environment' play in health and health outcomes in our community?

Provide citations in APA style.

Answer 1

Built environment refers to physical environments that are designed for the improve health and wellness of the communities.

Basically, built environments are the anthropogenic surroundings that provide the setting for human activity, such as buildings, parks, grocery shops, recreational activity, and community garden etc.

In built environment neighbourhoods are created in such a way that can affect both the physical activity and mental health of the residents (Renalds et al., 2010)

The built environment was designed to improve physical activity has achieve its goal. As reported, the built environments has improve has increases rates of physical activity, which in turn, positively affects health (Carlson et al., 2012).

In built environment, the neighbourhoods are with more walkability facilitated lower rates of obesity in addition to the increased physical activity among its residents. Interestingly, lower rates of depression, higher social capital, and less alcohol abuse were also recorded in the residents of built environment.^{[9] (}Renalds et al., 2010).

In addition to the walkability, bikeability is another important component of the built environment. In built environments, an area has granted for bikeability or safe biking through multiple bike paths and bike lanes (Horacek et al., 2012). Both walkability and bikeability have been improved the physical activity (Cochrane and Davey, 2008).

Built environment also provide access to healthy food. It is obvious that, a higher density of convenience stores will create higher obesity in children (Grafova, 2008). Improved access of access to community supermarkets and farmer's markets in the built environment correlated with lower overweight status (Tahman et al., 2012).

Built environment has another integral part called community gardens. The community garden has increase the fruit and vegetable intake among gardeners (Litt et al., 2012).

Additionally, community gardens have also been demonstrated to have positive social and psychological impacts that results in lower levels of stress and hypertension that improves overall health of the individual and the community.

Built environments also have the facility for recreational facilities that promotes physical activity among children (Sallis et al., 2012)

References (Detail of citations cited above)

Renalds, A., Smith, T. H., & Hale, P. J. (2010). A systematic review of built environment and health. Family & community health, 33(1), 68-78.

Carlson, C., Aytur, S., Gardner, K., & Rogers, S. (2012). Complexity in built environment, health, and destination walking: a neighborhood-scale analysis. Journal of Urban Health, 89(2), 270-284.

Sallis, J. F., Floyd, M. F., Rodríguez, D. A., & Saelens, B. E. (2012). Role of built environments in physical activity, obesity, and cardiovascular disease. Circulation, 125(5), 729-737.

Litt, J. S., Soobader, M. J., Turbin, M. S., Hale, J. W., Buchenau, M., & Marshall, J. A. (2011). The influence of social involvement, neighborhood aesthetics, and community garden participation on fruit and vegetable consumption. American journal of public health, 101(8), 1466-1473.

Horacek, T. M., White, A. A., Greene, G. W., Reznar, M. M., Quick, V. M., Morrell, J. S., ... & Mathews, A. (2012). Sneakers and spokes: An assessment of the walkability and bikeability of US postsecondary institutions. Journal of environmental health, 74(7), 8-15.

Cochrane, T., & Davey, R. C. (2008). Increasing uptake of physical activity: a social ecological approach. The journal of the Royal Society for the Promotion of Health, 128(1), 31-40.

Grafova, I. B. (2008). Overweight children: assessing the contribution of the built environment. Preventive medicine, 47(3), 304-308.

Rahman, T., Cushing, R. A., & Jackson, R. J. (2011). Contributions of built environment to childhood obesity. Mount Sinai Journal of Medicine: A Journal of Translational and Personalized Medicine, 78(1), 49-57.