No abstract

Our findings indicate that contact with NOE benefits mental health. Our results also suggest that having contact with NOE that can facilitate stress reduction could be particularly beneficial.

The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement no 282996. Margarita Triguero-Mas is funded by a pre-doctoral grant from the Catalan Government (AGAUR FI-DGR-2013). Payam Dadvand is funded by a Ramón y Cajal fellowship (RYC-2012-10995) awarded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness. ISGlobal is a member of the CERCA Programme, Generalitat de Catalunya. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. This study has been funded by Instituto de Salud Carlos III through the projects "CP14/00108 & PI16/00261" (Co-funded by European Regional Development Fund "A way to make Europe"). Jordi Julvez was funded by a Miguel Servet fellowship (MS14/00108) awarded by the Spanish Institute of Health Carlos III (Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness).

No abstract

This study investigated whether residential availability of natural outdoor environments (NOE) was associated with contact with NOE, overall physical activity and physical activity in NOE, in four different European cities using objective measures. A nested cross-sectional study was conducted in Barcelona (Spain); Stoke-on-Trent (United Kingdom); Doetinchem (The Netherlands); and Kaunas (Lithuania). Smartphones were used to collect information on the location and physical activity (overall and NOE) of around 100 residents of each city over seven days. We used Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to determine residential NOE availability (presence/absence of NOE within 300 m buffer from residence), contact with NOE (time spent in NOE), overall PA (total physical activity), NOE PA (total physical activity in NOE). Potential effect modifiers were investigated. Participants spent around 40 min in NOE and 80 min doing overall PA daily, of which 11% was in NOE. Having residential NOE availability was consistently linked with higher NOE contact during weekdays, but not to overall PA. Having residential NOE availability was related to NOE PA, especially for our Barcelona participants, people that lived in a city with low NOE availability.