Research project Home and workplace – do their locations matter for health behaviours?

Several studies have shown that the environments in which people live may contribute to health and health behaviours independently of individuals’ personal characteristics. Nevertheless, working age population spends a majority of their time awake commuting and at their workplace. In addition, long commute may be associated with poor health behaviours, whereas an "ideal" distance from home to workplace may encourage to active commute by bicycle or on foot. However, these associations have not been examined in detail.

This project will fill these gaps in evidence by using longitudinal cohort data where environmental characteristics have been linked to participants’ home and workplace addresses.

The aims of this project are to examine

1. how the environmental characteristics of individual’s home and workplace separately and together are associated with different health behaviours, and
2. whether the distance between home and workplace is associated with different health behaviours.

The associations will be examined by gender and by socioeconomic and age strata to reveal possible differences between population subgroups.

Geographical segregation is a problem in Swedish cities as indicated by the recent list of vulnerable areas by the Swedish Police. These vulnerable areas are characterized particularly by low socioeconomic status. This multidisciplinary project, including environmental, societal and health disciplines, will thus provide significant and timely information for policy makers regarding how different characteristics of residential and workplace environments, and the distance between home and workplace, are associated with health behaviours in the Swedish context.