Daily HealthBeat Tip - January 05, 2007

Scared to be active

From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I'm Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.

A bad neighborhood might be more than that for older people. One researcher says older people who live in urban areas with the worst crime, disorder and neglect are almost twice as likely to be obese.

Thomas Glass of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found it in Baltimore neighborhoods. He looked for things that make people afraid, such as vacant houses, and violent crimes, but which could be measured and fixed.

"We know that there's a higher rate of obesity in impoverished neighborhoods. How people perceive their neighborhood and whether they feel safe is a critical part of the story." (10 seconds)

Individual exercise is good. But Glass says it'll take more than individual exercise to fix neighborhoods.

Glass' study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine was supported by the National Institutes of Health.

Learn more at www.hhs.gov.

HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I'm Ira Dreyfuss.

Last revised: January, 08 2007