# Characterizing health impacts of built environment features using complex data

> **NIH NIH R01** · DREXEL UNIVERSITY · 2021 · $727,944

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY
Background and significance: Features of the built environment and the availability of specific community
resources constrain individuals’ choices and thus may contribute to the adoption and maintenance of health-
promoting behaviors, such as eating healthy diets and engaging in physical activity, that in turn may affect
downstream biological (e.g., BMI) and clinical outcomes (e.g., cardiovascular disease). New technologies have
rapidly increased the ability to link databases with geo-referenced information on environmental features to
individual-level health data, thereby exponentially propelling research that examines associations between the
built environment and health. This linked information is highly relevant to clinical practice, making it feasible to
tailor interventions and treatments; and to novel study designs that use large databases, such as electronic
health records, to investigate the joint effects of built environment factors and individual susceptibility on a
range of health and health care outcomes. These linked data are also important for building evidence to
support emerging urban design strategies that seek to create environments that promote health. However,
methodological challenges, including exposure assessment and selection biases, make it difficult to identify the
true impact of the built environment on individual behaviors, and the consequent ability to design place-based
interventions to improve health. Objectives, innovation: This project uses data from a state of the art
longitudinal study and methods that address residential self-selection, and develops and applies innovative
approaches to address measurement challenges. The project will: (1a) estimate the geographic and temporal
scales that are relevant for the effects of time-varying availability of community resources and built
environment features on repeated measures of health behaviors, biological and clinical outcomes, and (1b)
quantify differences in geographic and temporal scales across individuals and specific mechanisms; (2)
develop and apply novel methods to ascertain and quantify exposures to multiple, complex environmental
features, and assess their simultaneous impact on health indicators; (3) quantify the impact of measurement
error in existing large scale built environment databases on estimated associations. The proposed analytical
tools will be made freely available through R software packages, and results will be disseminated to multiple
audiences, including urban planners. Impact: Results from this project will (a) increase precision in the
translation, interpretation and evidence synthesis of past, current, and future studies of built environment
health effects; (b) provide scientists with specific guidance on how to standardize measures of the built
environment, and incorporate them into large scale individual-level health databases (e.g., electronic health
records); and (c) inform best practices for the next generation of re...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10105345
- **Project number:** 5R01HL131610-05
- **Recipient organization:** DREXEL UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Brisa N Sanchez
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $727,944
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2017-02-15 → 2024-01-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10105345

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10105345, Characterizing health impacts of built environment features using complex data (5R01HL131610-05). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10105345. Licensed CC0.

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