July 17 | 2017

Large-scale physical activity data reveal worldwide activity inequality

Tim Althoff, Rok Sosič, Jennifer L. Hicks, Abby C. King, Scott L. Delp & Jure Leskovec., 2017.  Nature, Published online 10 July 2017.

https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature23018.htmldoi:10.1038/nature23018

Using data captured from smartphones, researchers have amassed a dataset consisting of 68 million days of physical activity for 717,527 people to study activity across the globe.

As described in the abstract: “Aspects of the built environment, such as the walkability of a city, are associated with a smaller gender gap in activity and lower activity inequality. In more walkable cities, activity is greater throughout the day and throughout the week, across age, gender, and body mass index (BMI) groups, with the greatest increases in activity found for females. Our findings have implications for global public health policy and urban planning and highlight the role of activity inequality and the built environment in improving physical activity and health.”