Environmental and social influences on physical activity

在这个国家和其他发达国家，儿童和成人的肥胖症越来越普遍。尽管确切的原因尚不清楚，但有证据表明，即使是身体活动的微小变化也有助于扭转这种破坏性趋势。体育锻炼还能降低患心脏病、糖尿病、骨质疏松症甚至某些癌症的风险。不幸的是，成人的活动水平似乎在下降，儿童也可能如此，尽管令人惊讶的是，几乎没有信息可以证实这一点。增加活动的方法，例如家庭医生的运动处方，取得的成功有限。关于人们为什么不活跃以及可以做些什么来鼓励活动，有很多原因。这些措施涵盖了各种不同的领域，如政府关于交通的政策，以及学校运动场、体育设施和宜人的社区的可用性。有些人比其他人更容易改变。在提出可能无益和昂贵的建议之前，了解久坐的成年人和儿童的实际情况以及哪些因素（心理，文化，环境等）与不活动最密切相关是有用的。因此，针对这些因素中的一些因素来增加活动量是合乎逻辑的。我们建议通过问卷调查来测量成年志愿者的身体活动，并通过问卷调查来测量9-10岁的学龄儿童的身体活动，还可以使用火柴盒大小的设备，称为加速度计，佩戴在腰部，测量运动，而不是像计步器。问卷还将评估一系列被认为与活动有关的志愿人员特征，包括对环境的看法。此外，我们将使用直接观察和地理信息系统（包含街道照明，花园大小和交通水平等因素的数据）来评估建筑环境，例如学校和社区。这将使每个志愿人员的身体活动措施和环境评估联系起来。然后，我们计划采访家庭，以确定促进体育活动的障碍和机会。最后，我们将把结果提交给负责健康、儿童和环境的感兴趣的团体，如学校管理者、校长、诺福克儿童？的服务，也剑桥地平线，地方当局和英格兰东部发展署谁负责提供近50,000个新的家园和22亿英镑的支持基础设施在更广泛的附近剑桥到2016年。

Obesity in both children and adults is becoming increasingly common in this and other developed countries. Although the precise causes remain unclear, evidence suggests that even fairly small changes in physical activity could help to reverse this damaging trend. Physical activity also reduces risks of heart disease, diabetes, osteoporosis and even some cancers. Unfortunately, levels of activity appear to be decreasing in adults and may also be in children, although there is surprisingly little information available to confirm this. Approaches to increase activity, for example exercise prescriptions from the family doctor, have had limited success. There are many reasons put forward as to why people are inactive and what could be done to encourage activity. These cover such diverse areas as government policy concerning transport through to availability of school playing fields, sports facilities and a pleasant neighbourhood. Some are more easily altered than others. Before making potentially unhelpful and expensive recommendations it is useful to know how sedentary adults and children actually are and which factors (psychological, cultural, environmental and so on) are most strongly associated with inactivity. It would then be logical to target some of these factors in an effort to increase activity.We propose to measure physical activity in adult volunteers by questionnaire and in 9-10 year old school children by questionnaire and also by using a matchbox sized device called an accelerometer worn on the waist which measures movement rather like a pedometer. The questionnaires will also assess a range of volunteer characteristics thought to be associated with activity including perceptions of the environment. In addition we will assess the built environment eg school and neighbourhood using both direct observation and a geographical information system that contains data on factors such as street lighting, garden size and traffic levels. This will enable the measures of physical activity and the assessment of the environment to be linked for each volunteer. We then plan to interview families to identify the barriers and opportunities to promoting physical activity. Finally we will present the results to interested groups with responsibility for health, children and the environment such as school governors, head teachers, Norfolk Children?s Services and also Cambridge Horizons, Local Authorities and the East of England Development Agency who are responsible for delivering nearly 50,000 new homes and #2.2billion of support infrastructure in the wider vicinity of Cambridge by 2016.