A natural experiment to assess how urban interventions in lower socioeconomic areas influence health behaviors: the UrbASanté study.

Background: Mechanisms underlying the associations between changes in the urban environment and changes in health-related outcomes are complex and their study requires specific approaches. We describe the protocol of the interdisciplinary UrbASanté study, which aims to explore how urban interventions can modify environmental exposures (built, social, and food environments; air quality; noise), health-related behaviors, and self-reported health using a natural experiment approach.

Methods: The study is based on a natural experiment design using a before/after protocol with a control group to assess changes in environmental exposures, health-risk behaviors, and self-reported health outcomes of a resident adult population before and after the implementation of a time series of urban interventions in four contiguous neighborhoods in Paris (France).

Illegal Harvesting within a Protected Area: Spatial Distribution of Activities, Social Drivers of Wild Meat Consumption, and Wildlife Conservation.

The African tropical forests host an inestimable number of resources, including food, medicine, vegetal and animal species. Among them, chimpanzees are threatened with extinction by human activities affecting their habitats, such as forest product harvesting, and/or more directly, snaring and trafficking. We aimed to better understand the spatial distribution of these illegal activities, and the reasons for setting snares and consuming wild meat in an agricultural landscape (subsistence farming and cash crops) densely populated near a protected area (Sebitoli, Northern part of Kibale National Park, Uganda).

Exposome Profiles and Asthma among French Adults.

Although previous studies in environmental epidemiology focused on single or a few exposures, a holistic approach combining multiple preventable risk factors is needed to tackle the etiology of multifactorial diseases such as asthma. To investigate the association between combined socioeconomic, external environment, early-life environment, and lifestyle-anthropometric factors and asthma phenotypes. A total of 20,833 adults from the French NutriNet-Santé cohort were included (mean age, 56.

Associations between retail food environment and the nutritional quality of food purchases in French households: The Mont'Panier cross-sectional study.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to assess whether the retail food environment, measured by multiple indicators around the home and in activity space, was associated with the nutritional quality of food purchases.

Methods: This cross-sectional study included 462 households from a quota sampling survey conducted in the south of France (Montpellier Metropolitan Area). The revised Healthy Purchase Index was implemented in order to assess the nutritional quality of food purchases.

Spatial determinants of excess all-cause mortality during the first wave of the COVID-19 epidemic in France.

Background: The first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in France was associated with high excess mortality, and anecdotal evidence pointed to differing excess mortality patterns depending on social and environmental determinants. In this study we aimed to investigate the spatial distribution of excess mortality during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in France and relate it at the subnational level to contextual determinants from various dimensions (socioeconomic, population density, overall health status, healthcare access etc.).

Individual, Social, and Environmental Correlates of Active Transportation Patterns in French Women.

The objectives were (1) to define physical activity (PA) and sedentary behaviors (SB) patterns in daily life contexts (work, leisure, and transportation) in French working women from NutriNet-Santé web-cohort and (2) to identify pattern(s) of active transportation and their individual, social, and environmental correlates. 23,432 participants completed two questionnaires to evaluate PA and SB in daily life contexts and individual representations of residential neighborhood and transportation modes. Hierarchical cluster analysis was performed which identified 6 distinct movement behavior patterns: (i) active occupation, high sedentary leisure, (ii) sedentary occupation, low leisure, (iii) sedentary transportation, (iv) sedentary occupation and leisure, (v) active transportation, and (vi) active leisure.

Neighborhood educational disparities in active commuting among women: the effect of distance between the place of residence and the place of work/study (an ACTI-Cités study).

Background: Active transportation has been associated with favorable health outcomes. Previous research highlighted the influence of neighborhood educational level on active transportation. However, little is known regarding the effect of commuting distance on social disparities in active commuting.

Built environmental correlates of cycling for transport across Europe.

This cross-sectional study aimed to determine which objective built environmental factors, identified using a virtual neighbourhood audit, were associated with cycling for transport in adults living in five urban regions across Europe. The moderating role of age, gender, socio-economic status and country on these associations was also investigated. Overall, results showed that people living in neighbourhoods with a preponderance of speed limits below 30km/h, many bicycle lanes, with less traffic calming devices, more trees, more litter and many parked cars forming an obstacle on the road were more likely to cycle for transport than people living in areas with lower prevalence of these factors.

Active Mobility and Environment: A Pilot Qualitative Study for the Design of a New Questionnaire.

It is generally accepted that active mobility, mainly walking and cycling, contributes to people's physical and mental health. One of the current challenges is to improve our understanding of this type of behaviour. This study aims to identify factors from the daily-life environment that may be related to active mobility behaviours, in order to design a new questionnaire for a quantitative study of a large adult population.

Lifestyle correlates of overweight in adults: a hierarchical approach (the SPOTLIGHT project).

Background: Obesity-related lifestyle behaviors usually co-exist but few studies have examined their simultaneous relation with body weight. This study aimed to identify the hierarchy of lifestyle-related behaviors associated with being overweight in adults, and to examine subgroups so identified.

Methods: Data were obtained from a cross-sectional survey conducted across 60 urban neighborhoods in 5 European urban regions between February and September 2014.

Walking and cycling for commuting, leisure and errands: relations with individual characteristics and leisure-time physical activity in a cross-sectional survey (the ACTI-Cités project).

Background: Increasing active transport behavior (walking, cycling) throughout the life-course is a key element of physical activity promotion for health. There is, however, a need to better understand the correlates of specific domains of walking and cycling to identify more precisely at-risk populations for public health interventions. In addition, current knowledge of interactions between domains of walking and cycling remains limited.

Spatial heterogeneity of the relationships between environmental characteristics and active commuting: towards a locally varying social ecological model.

Background: According to the social ecological model of health-related behaviors, it is now well accepted that environmental factors influence habitual physical activity. Most previous studies on physical activity determinants have assumed spatial homogeneity across the study area, i.e.