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The geospatial and conceptual configuration of the natural environment impacts the association with health outcomes and behavior in children and adolescents
BACKGROUND: Studies investigating associations between natural environments and health outcomes or health behaviors in children and adolescents yielded heterogenous results to date. This may be the result of different geospatial configurations of the natural environment and confounding characteristi...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9366780/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35953832 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12942-022-00309-0 |
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author | Nigg, Carina Niessner, Claudia Burchartz, Alexander Woll, Alexander Schipperijn, Jasper |
author_facet | Nigg, Carina Niessner, Claudia Burchartz, Alexander Woll, Alexander Schipperijn, Jasper |
author_sort | Nigg, Carina |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Studies investigating associations between natural environments and health outcomes or health behaviors in children and adolescents yielded heterogenous results to date. This may be the result of different geospatial configurations of the natural environment and confounding characteristics of the study population. Thus, we investigated how the relationship between the natural environment and mental health, muscular fitness, and physical activity varies depending on the geospatial configuration of nature and children’s and adolescents’ characteristics. METHODS: Data were derived from the German Motorik-Modul (MoMo) cohort study (2018–2020) that investigates physical activity, muscular fitness, and health parameters in a national sample of children and adolescents (N = 2843) between four and 17 years (M(age) = 10.46 ± 3.49 years; 48.3% girls). Mental health was assessed via questionnaire, muscular fitness via standing long jump, and physical activity with 7-day accelerometer measurement. Using geographic information systems, land cover, and land use data, three different nature definitions were applied. Both circular buffers (100–1000 m) and street-network buffers (1000–5000 m) were created for each of the nature definitions. Associations were explored with linear regression models, and interaction analysis was used to investigate how those relationships vary by gender, age, and socio-economic status. RESULTS: The relationship between the three outcomes and the natural environment varied considerably depending on the nature definition, buffer size, and buffer type, as well as socio-demographic characteristics. Specifically, when comparing youth with a high socio-economic status to those with a medium socio-economic status, smaller circular buffer distances were related to less physical activity, but larger street-network buffer distances were related to greater mental health problems. Distinct relationships also occurred for youth with low socio-economic status in those relationships, with the pattern being less clear. CONCLUSIONS: For future health research studies that investigate the role of the natural environment, we argue for the development of an a-priori model that integrates both geospatial considerations (nature definition, buffer type, and buffer size) and conceptual considerations (health outcome/behavior, sample characteristics) based on potentially underlying mechanisms that link the natural environment and the health outcome or behavior under investigation to theoretically underpin the geospatial configuration of the natural environment. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12942-022-00309-0. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9366780 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-93667802022-08-11 The geospatial and conceptual configuration of the natural environment impacts the association with health outcomes and behavior in children and adolescents Nigg, Carina Niessner, Claudia Burchartz, Alexander Woll, Alexander Schipperijn, Jasper Int J Health Geogr Methodology BACKGROUND: Studies investigating associations between natural environments and health outcomes or health behaviors in children and adolescents yielded heterogenous results to date. This may be the result of different geospatial configurations of the natural environment and confounding characteristics of the study population. Thus, we investigated how the relationship between the natural environment and mental health, muscular fitness, and physical activity varies depending on the geospatial configuration of nature and children’s and adolescents’ characteristics. METHODS: Data were derived from the German Motorik-Modul (MoMo) cohort study (2018–2020) that investigates physical activity, muscular fitness, and health parameters in a national sample of children and adolescents (N = 2843) between four and 17 years (M(age) = 10.46 ± 3.49 years; 48.3% girls). Mental health was assessed via questionnaire, muscular fitness via standing long jump, and physical activity with 7-day accelerometer measurement. Using geographic information systems, land cover, and land use data, three different nature definitions were applied. Both circular buffers (100–1000 m) and street-network buffers (1000–5000 m) were created for each of the nature definitions. Associations were explored with linear regression models, and interaction analysis was used to investigate how those relationships vary by gender, age, and socio-economic status. RESULTS: The relationship between the three outcomes and the natural environment varied considerably depending on the nature definition, buffer size, and buffer type, as well as socio-demographic characteristics. Specifically, when comparing youth with a high socio-economic status to those with a medium socio-economic status, smaller circular buffer distances were related to less physical activity, but larger street-network buffer distances were related to greater mental health problems. Distinct relationships also occurred for youth with low socio-economic status in those relationships, with the pattern being less clear. CONCLUSIONS: For future health research studies that investigate the role of the natural environment, we argue for the development of an a-priori model that integrates both geospatial considerations (nature definition, buffer type, and buffer size) and conceptual considerations (health outcome/behavior, sample characteristics) based on potentially underlying mechanisms that link the natural environment and the health outcome or behavior under investigation to theoretically underpin the geospatial configuration of the natural environment. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12942-022-00309-0. BioMed Central 2022-08-11 /pmc/articles/PMC9366780/ /pubmed/35953832 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12942-022-00309-0 Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. |
spellingShingle | Methodology Nigg, Carina Niessner, Claudia Burchartz, Alexander Woll, Alexander Schipperijn, Jasper The geospatial and conceptual configuration of the natural environment impacts the association with health outcomes and behavior in children and adolescents |
title | The geospatial and conceptual configuration of the natural environment impacts the association with health outcomes and behavior in children and adolescents |
title_full | The geospatial and conceptual configuration of the natural environment impacts the association with health outcomes and behavior in children and adolescents |
title_fullStr | The geospatial and conceptual configuration of the natural environment impacts the association with health outcomes and behavior in children and adolescents |
title_full_unstemmed | The geospatial and conceptual configuration of the natural environment impacts the association with health outcomes and behavior in children and adolescents |
title_short | The geospatial and conceptual configuration of the natural environment impacts the association with health outcomes and behavior in children and adolescents |
title_sort | geospatial and conceptual configuration of the natural environment impacts the association with health outcomes and behavior in children and adolescents |
topic | Methodology |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9366780/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35953832 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12942-022-00309-0 |
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