# Are Interventions Supporting Physical ACtivity modified by the Environment (InSPACE)?

> **NIH NIH R01** · SEATTLE CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL · 2021 · $767,757

## Abstract

Most youth and adults in the U.S. do not meet recommended levels of physical activity, despite
the significant and extensive health benefits associated with being sufficiently active.
Interventions to increase physical activity are critical to improving an individuals' and population
health. However, generally efficacious interventions may not be consistently effective across
individuals. Personalized behavioral medicine in which interventions are tailored to the context
in which individuals are attempting to improve health behaviors remains a nascent field. Among
context factors, built and social environment factors within the home neighborhood are related
cross-sectionally to individuals' physical activity (e.g., residents in more walkable neighborhoods
are generally more active). However, cross-sectional observational studies do not identify
whether or which environmental factors are facilitators or barriers to attempts to increase
physical activity. The proposed InSPACE project examines whether and which home
neighborhood built and social environment factors affect individuals' response to physical
activity interventions. We propose to recruit and engage with 50+ physical activity intervention
trials across the country to generate comprehensive and consistent measures of objective built
(e.g., residential density) and social (e.g., median household income) neighborhood
environment linked to individual participants within each trial. Advances in the availability of
national spatial data and an innovative user-friendly tool to create and attribute environmental
measures to anywhere in the U.S. (the Automatic Context Measurement Tool) makes InSPACE
timely and feasible. Environmental, physical activity outcome, and demographic data will be
harmonized across trials and pooled to allow for robust testing of environmental effect
modification of physical activity intervention not possible within single trials. In addition, pooled
data will allow for testing of whether critical individual-level demographic factors, such as age
and race/ethnicity, interact with neighborhood environmental factors in affecting physical activity
intervention outcome. Guided by an expert scientific advisory council, findings from InSPACE
have the potential to rapidly and efficiently identify who will be responsive to existing efficacious
physical activity interventions in what contexts and encourage innovation in changing
interventions to better match individuals' environmental contexts when attempting to increase
physical activity.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10180353
- **Project number:** 1R01HL157166-01
- **Recipient organization:** SEATTLE CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL
- **Principal Investigator:** BRIAN E SAELENS
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $767,757
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2021-05-01 → 2025-04-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10180353

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10180353, Are Interventions Supporting Physical ACtivity modified by the Environment (InSPACE)? (1R01HL157166-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-21 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10180353. Licensed CC0.

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