Walkability Plays a Crucial Role in Maintaining Mental Health During Pandemics

As the country shut down during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, walking became a lifeline for exercise and socialization for many people. Karen Conway, a professor of economics at UNH's Peter T. Paul College of Business and Economics, took her personal experience and combined it with her research interest in walkable communities to find that walkability played a significant role in helping people maintain their mental health during the pandemic. Conway's study, published in Health Economics, analyzed national census and survey data around walkability and found that increasing a neighborhood's walkability by just four points on the EPA's 0-20 Walkability Index was associated with a 4% reduction in average pandemic-related mental health deterioration.

Key Takeaways:

• A study by Karen Conway and Andrea Menclova analyzed national census and survey data around walkability and found that increasing a neighborhood's walkability by just four points on the EPA's 0-20 Walkability Index was associated with a 4% reduction in average pandemic-related mental health deterioration.
• The researchers compared mental health trends before the pandemic (2018-2019) and during it (2020-2021) across more than 55,000 Census tracts nationwide, linking CDC survey data with the EPA Walkability Index.
• The study found that walking habits shifted sharply in the early months of the pandemic, with walking for transportation declining while leisure walking became more common.
• More than three-quarters of survey respondents said they walked near home "almost always" or "most of the time," and that share grew as the pandemic went on.
• Because sidewalks, roads, and neighborhood layout don't change overnight, walkability itself tends to remain stable, making it difficult to use the typical "before and after" approach needed to measure how changes in walkability affect health outcomes.
• The pandemic provided the "random shock" needed to observe the potential impact of walkability on mental health, and the study's findings suggest that investing in walkable infrastructure could be a cost-effective mental health intervention.
• Conway hopes the findings open the door to more research into how walkability can help people cope with stressors, including grief, divorce, job loss, or everyday anxiety.
• Additional research could focus on racial and economic disparities in walking behavior and how walkability may contribute to or help address health inequities.
• In 2023, Conway and Menclova published a study showing that pregnant women in more walkable counties were less likely to experience complications like gestational diabetes, hypertension, and preterm birth.

Statistics:

• A 4% reduction in average pandemic-related mental health deterioration was associated with increasing a neighborhood's walkability by just four points on the EPA's 0-20 Walkability Index.
• More than 55,000 Census tracts were analyzed in the study.
• Three-quarters of survey respondents said they walked near home "almost always" or "most of the time."
• The study found that walking for transportation declined by a significant amount in the early months of the pandemic, while leisure walking increased.
• The EPA's 0-20 Walkability Index measures walkability, with scores under 6 indicating low walkability and scores above 15 indicating the most walkable communities.

Sources:

• Conway, K., & Menclova, A. (2022). Walkability and mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic. Health Economics, [no volume or issue number specified].
• Conway, K., & Menclova, A. (2023). The Relationship between Walkability and Pregnancy Outcomes. [No publication specified].