Public transit, obesity, and medical costs: assessing the magnitudes.

TLDR: While no silver bullet, walking associated with public transit can have a substantial impact on obesity, costs, and well-being.

About: This article is published in Preventive Medicine.The article was published on 2008-01-01 and is currently open access. It has received 127 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Population & Present value of costs.

Figures

Table 1 Sample characteristics of adults in the 2001 National Household Travel Survey

Fig. 1. Adult obesity rates in the United States, historical and projected. Data are the rate of obesity, defined as body mass index (BMI) 30 or greater, for the adult population measured in the National Health Examination Survey (NHES) and National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). Obesity rates are calculated by Flegal et al. (2002) and Ogden et al. (2006), appear as circles in the figure, and are plotted at the midpoint of the NHANES examination period. The dashed line represents a simple forward extrapolation from the most recent data point of the average annual increase in the rate, 0.5%, which is estimated by ordinary least squares regression of all historical data on time.

Table 4 The effect of additional walking due to public transit on health status and its value

Table 3 The effect of additional walking on the present value of additional health care spending associated with obesity, 2007 dollars

Frequently asked questions

Q1. What contributions have the authors mentioned in the paper "Public transit, obesity, and medical costs: assessing the magnitudes" ?

This paper assesses the potential benefits of increased walking and reduced obesity associated with taking public transit in terms of dollars of medical costs saved and disability avoided. Further research is warranted on the net impact of transit usage on all behaviors, including caloric intake and other types of exercise, and on whether policies can promote transit usage at acceptable cost.