Association between crime rates in the neighborhood of residence and physical activity of older-persons from Porto

Introdution: The benefits of physical activity are even more significant among elder people who tend to associate physically active lifestyle with group's activities in public and safe spaces. Objective: we aimed to investigate the relationship between crime rates and proximity to exercise facilities with the frequency of leisure-time physical activity (LTPA) in the elderly (>64 years) of Porto, Portugal. Methods: We georeferenced 536 subjects using their residence addresses. Information about social, demographic, clinical and physical activity were collected by a structured survey. Exercise facilities included in the study were parks, sports centers and destinations (churches, health centers, shopping, etc.). We georeferenced all the exercice facilities using a Global Positioning System and images of Google Earth. Crimes from the 2008 report of the Public Security Police were georeferenced at census tract level to calculate the crimes rate. Results: Through logistic regression we calculated Odds Ratio (OR, IC95%) to evaluate the relationship between physical activity (active/inactive) and environmental variables adjusted for individual variables. From the total individuals (n=536) 55% were inactive. The chance to be active increased 1.09 for higher education (p<0.001) and men were 1.55 times more active than women (p=0.022). Men living in areas with more than 500m away from suitable sports spaces were 6.2 times more active than those living closer to sporting venues (p=0.002). Conclusion: For older women, the individual characteristics and overall crime rates of their residence neighborhood were associated with being physically active while for older men proximity to suitable sports spaces were associated with being physically active.