Recently published article by INEB researcher is ON THE NEWS

In June INEB researcher Ana Isabel Ribeiro published an article on elderly physical activity in BMC Public Health, which is now object of the media's attention.

The researcher sought to understand how urban neighborhoods influence the lives of elderly citizens and active ageing by resorting to objective measures and systems of geographical information.The study, conducted by Ana Isabel Ribeiro and coordinated by Maria de Fátima Pina, focused on unraveling what influences elderly physical activity in Portugal and found that the proximity to parks and other leisure areas may help improve the levels of physical activity within the senior community. This is especially true when it comes to women, because men seem to be unaffected by their surroundings.

Studies that establish a correlation between elderly physical activity and the characteristics of urban surroundings had already been carried out in other countries but this is the first one whose sample is exclusively from Southern Europe. A work of this nature is timely considering how the world's population is getting older and increasingly clustered in cities, Portugal being an extreme example of that: the National Statistics Institute projects that by 2060 there will be 300 seniors per 100 youngsters, which is why it's so important to create conditions for healthy and active ageing.