HeartHealthyHoods Starting Grant ERC 2013

The Heart Healthy Hoods project aims to measure the food, physical activity, alcohol and tobacco environments of hundreds of neighbourhoods in Madrid, a city with similar historical and demographic profile as many other European cities, and to correlate the results with cardiovascular primary care health records.

Objectives

The overall objective of this project is:

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To study the associations between the social and physical features of the urban environment in relation to population cardiovascular health.

The secondary objectives are the following:

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To run a formative research phase using an qualitative approach to identify and understand the main  features of the environment in relation to CVD and the main pathways of this relation.

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To develop a methodology based on state of the art techniques to characterize the social and physical  urban environments in a systematic and accurate fashion.

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To compare the already studied relation between the urban environment and cardiovascular health in the  United States with this relation in Europe.

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To evaluate naturally occurring changes (natural experiments) such as public policy interventions occurring during the time of the study modifying the food and physical activity environment.