Abstract
Heart health is important for the quality of life, especially for older adults. Awareness is mounting that green space possibly matters for promoting heart health. While most studies mainly focused on the relationship between green space and cardiovascular diseases among older adults, scant attention has been paid to general heart heat measures through electrocardiography (ECG). This study aims to systematically assess the association between community green space exposure and heart health for Chinese older adults using street view and ECG. This observational, cross-sectional study was based on data from the 33 Chinese Community Health Study (33 CCHS). The heart health was measured by the presence of electrocardiographic abnormalities. We used street view data to calculate exposure to community street view green space (SVG) and further distinguished between street view trees (SVG-tree) and grass (SVG-grass). As a green space reference, we also incorporated the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). The results showed that SVG-grass was negatively associated with older adults’ odds of reporting electrocardiographic abnormalities, but there is no evidence that SVG-tree or NDVI was related to that. Also, the stratified analyses indicated that the results vary across demographic and socioeconomic groups. Heart health for males and older adults with lower income or educational attainment were significantly associated with SVG exposure, while such findings were not found for their counterparts. Our findings suggest ECG and street view data are promising in understanding green space-heart health associations. Hence, it is essential to promote the provision and visibility of community green space especially for older adults in disadvantaged groups.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 105025 |
| Number of pages | 9 |
| Journal | Landscape and Urban Planning |
| Volume | 245 |
| Early online date | 7 Feb 2024 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - May 2024 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2024 Elsevier B.V.
Funding
This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2023YFC3709200, 2022YFC3702700), National Natural Science Foundation of China (82003418, M-042), Zhongnanshan Medical Foundation of Guangdong Province (ZNSXS-20230012), Scientific and Technological Projects of Shenzhen (JCYJ20230807153259001), Open Project of State Key Laboratory of Respiratory Disease (SKLRD-OP-202402). Marco Helbich’s time on this publication is supported by the “Strategic research and innovation program for the development of Medical University – Plovdiv” No. BG-RRP-2.004-0007-C01, Establishment of a network of research higher schools, National plan for recovery and resilience, financed by the European Union –NextGenerationEU. The authors acknowledge the cooperation of the study participants who had been very generous with their time and assistance. The study was conducted with the principles stipulated by the Declaration of Helsinki and all procedures were approved by the ethics review committee of Sun Yat-Sen University (Guangzhou, China; Identification code: SYSU016). We have collected written informed consent from all participants.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| Medical University | BG-RRP-2.004-0007-C01 |
| Scientific and Technological Projects of Shenzhen | JCYJ20230807153259001 |
| Zhongnanshan Medical Foundation of Guangdong Province | ZNSXS-20230012 |
| State Key Laboratory of Respiratory Disease | SKLRD-OP-202402 |
| European Commission | |
| National Natural Science Foundation of China | 82003418, M-042 |
| Sun Yat-Sen University | SYSU016 |
| National Key Research and Development Program of China | 2023YFC3709200, 2022YFC3702700 |
Keywords
- Electrocardiographic technique
- Green space
- Heart health
- Older adults
- Street view
