Session: Built Environment Institute V: Transportation, The Built Environment, and Public Health: A Critical Review of the Science

4128.1: Tuesday, November 9, 2004: 12:30 PM-2:00 PM

Roundtable

Built Environment Institute V: Transportation, The Built Environment, and Public Health: A Critical Review of the Science

During the past several years a large literature has developed that relates transportation and the built environment to public health outcomes. The main feature of these findings is the association between current transportation networks, their surrounding built environment and the increasing incidence of the disease obesity. Obesity has been identified by the medical community as one of the most serious diseases in the nation. Obesity co-morbidities are a major problem as well with an estimated $75 billion spent annually to treat these maladies. The primary tool for linking obesity with transportation and the built environment is epidemiological and statistical studies. While it appears that the majority of these studies use accepted experimental or investigative techniques, it is not clear whether these techniques have the ability to accurately and reliably capture the biological, behavioral, spatial, temporal, and constructed environment complexity to render authoritative findings. For example, many researchers are finding negative health outcome correlations based on the use of limited existing data bases usually not designed for the work being done, complex statistics that are far from transparent, and metrics of their own design. Emerging research indicates that these early findings may be methodological artifacts and not real cause and effect relationships. The public health community would benefit from an in-depth discussion of the scientific strength of these findings and their use in designing future studies that could move the discipline from assumed correlation to plausible and scientifically defensible correlation sufficient to allow a reasonable for causation. Such discussions could aid in government policy development based on the scientific strength of research findings. This proposed session and speakers would provide a balanced review and discussion of the scientific methods, findings, and conclusions raised by the current literature and provide suggestions for future targeted research.

Learning Objectives: Basic understanding of the state of the science concerning transportation, the built environment, and public health.

Organizer(s):

Robin Lee, MPH
Neal L. Rosenblatt, MS
David A. Belluck, PhD

Moderator(s):

David A. Belluck, PhD

Table 1

Complex issues of obesity in the built environment
David A. Belluck, PhD

Table 2

Built Environment and Obesity: What We Know and What We Need to Know *