Healthy Environment, Healthy People: Natural Experiments in Active Living Research
By: Dr. Chanam Lee
Date: Wednesday 3/13
Location: McHugh Hall 101
Time: 2:20 -3:20 pm
Place matters. The built, natural and social environment influences public health directly by exposing people
to healthy/unhealthy features (e.g. urban nature, pollutants) and indirectly through behaviors/lifestyles (e.g.
physical activity, crime). Despite significant correlational evidence, establishing causality in environmenthealth
research remains a challenge.
Natural Experiments (NEs) have become increasingly popular as ways to evaluate causal impacts of various
environmental interventions that are not suitable for controlled experimentation. NEs refer to observational
studies that examine exposures to an intervention that is not designed by the researcher, often involving
changes in the environment and policy.
This talk first provides an overview of “active living research (ALR)” as a transdisciplinary area of research
that deals with environmental and policy approaches toward promoting physical activity. Second, it
introduces to the recent and ongoing ALR projects carried out by the speaker’s research team. Third, the talk
addresses the unique opportunities and challenges of NEs, drawing from the specific examples of two ongoing
projects funded by the National Institutes of Health. Those projects represent two common types of
NEs: “relocation” (e.g. people moving to a different environment) and “exposure” (e.g. new grocery store or
transit service in a neighborhood).
About the speaker:
Chanam Lee, Ph.D., M.L.A., Professor
Dept. Landscape Architecture & Urban Planning,
Center for Health Systems & Design, Texas A&M University
https://cpha.tamhsc.edu/collaborating-partners/lee.html
For more information, contact: PSLA at psla@uconn.edu