A Population Perspective on Physical Activity and Health
type: CreativeWork
description: Regular physical activity reduces the risk of many chronic diseases. Consequently, the promotion of it and particular types (e.g. walking and cycling for travel), have become a priority for governments seeking to improve health and constrain rising demand on health services. Despite this many uncertainties persist. The aim of this thesis is to address two particular areas of uncertainty: a) the association of walking and cycling for travel with indices of health and well-being; b) and the extent to which increases in physical activity will reduce need for health and social care. The first part of my thesis consists of three studies that describe the health benefits associated with walking and cycling to work among working age adults. The first is a longitudinal study of the associations between maintenance of active commuting with sickness absence and well-being using the Commuting and Health in Cambridge dataset. The second, using the same dataset, describes the longitudinal associations between maintenance of active commuting and self-reported body mass index. Building on this, the third study using a large cohort study (the Fenland Study) with detailed characterisation of diet and physical activity (including objective measurement) describes the baseline associations between active commuting and objective measures of adiposity. The second part of my thesis describes the development of a combined microsimulation multi-state life table model that is used to characterise the effects of a population ‘shift’ in physical activity on the burden of six major diseases at the population-level. Specifically, it seeks to better describe the effect of increases in physical activity on healthcare need considering not just the effect of physical activity on disease incidence but also the effect on healthcare need arising from consequent survival to an older age (at which disease incidence is higher), and contrasts this with a method that does not make allowance for increased su…
abstract: Regular physical activity reduces the risk of many chronic diseases. Consequently, the promotion of it and particular types (e.g. walking and cycling for travel), have become a priority for governments seeking to improve health and constrain rising demand on health services. Despite this many uncertainties persist. The aim of this thesis is to address two particular areas of uncertainty: a) the association of walking and cycling for travel with indices of health and well-being; b) and the extent to which increases in physical activity will reduce need for health and social care. The first part of my thesis consists of three studies that describe the health benefits associated with walking and cycling to work among working age adults. The first is a longitudinal study of the associations between maintenance of active commuting with sickness absence and well-being using the Commuting and Health in Cambridge dataset. The second, using the same dataset, describes the longitudinal associations between maintenance of active commuting and self-reported body mass index. Building on this, the third study using a large cohort study (the Fenland Study) with detailed characterisation of diet and physical activity (including objective measurement) describes the baseline associations between active commuting and objective measures of adiposity. The second part of my thesis describes the development of a combined microsimulation multi-state life table model that is used to characterise the effects of a population ‘shift’ in physical activity on the burden of six major diseases at the population-level. Specifically, it seeks to better describe the effect of increases in physical activity on healthcare need considering not just the effect of physical activity on disease incidence but also the effect on healthcare need arising from consequent survival to an older age (at which disease incidence is higher), and contrasts this with a method that does not make allowance for increased su…
author: Mytton, Oliver
language: en
keywords: public health, physical activity, population approaches, obesity, adiposity, well-being, sickness absence, disease burden, cycling, walking, active travel
license: https://apollo8-f-pro.lib.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/08531646-e1ce-4ede-a1d3-af8272d5a23d/download
license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
date published: 2017-05-20
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:23:59Z
provider: Cambridge University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Cambridge

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.17863/CAM.9900