IPEN Research
Teams
Australia
IPEN Adult Team | IPEN Adolescent Team
IPEN Adult Research Team
Primary Investigator
Professor Neville Owen
Orcid ID: 0000-0003-2784-4820
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=hQpbZwwAAAAJ&hl=en
Neville is Distinguished Professor in the Centre for Urban Transitions at Swinburne University of Technology and a Senior Scientist in the Physical Activity Laboratory at the Baker Heart & Diabetes Institute in Melbourne, Australia. With Jim Sallis and Ilse Debourdeaudhuij, he helped to write the US NIH grant for the IPEN study. While working in the School of Population Health at the University of Queensland he collaborated with Evie Leslie, Ester Cerin, Takemi Sugiyama and others on PLACE (Physical Activity in Localities and Community Environments). PLACE is a study in Adelaide that provided groundwork for IPEN.
The data from PLACE then became part of the analytic work with our international dataset. Neville’s National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia support through Project, Program and Capacity Building grants with Adrian Bauman and Wendy Brown funded the salaries and infrastructure for the work of several of the key postdoctoral contributors to IPEN. He has fostered IPEN’s conceptual and empirical crosstalk with evidence from the national AusDiab study and the experimental biology program at the Baker Institute with David Dunstan; this has incorporated insights into sedentary behaviour and points to some unique biological underpinnings for IPEN’s findings
Research Team
Professor Ester Cerin
Orcid ID: : 0000-0002-7599-165X
Ester Cerin is the Leader of the Behaviour, Environment and Cognition Research Programme (BECPR) at the Mary MacKillop Institute for Health Research, Australian Catholic University. She also holds honorary professorial positions in the School of Public Health of the University of Hong Kong and Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute (Melbourne).
A psychologist and statistician, she has been studying environmental and psychosocial determinants of health and health-related behaviours, with specific focus on physical activity, for more than 15 years. She has authored over 250 papers on these topics in high-impact journals. She is co-founder of the International Cognitive Health and the Environment Network (ICHEN). ICHEN explores how urban environments impact cognitive health.
Ester joined the IPEN in 2004. She is one of the main investigators of both the IPEN Adult and IPEN Adolescent studies. Specifically, she is principal investigator of the Hong Kong arms, co-investigator of the Australian arms, and member of the Executive and Publication Committees. She is also chief analyst of both the IPEN Adolescent and IPEN Adult studies.
She is also a co-investigator of the New Zealand arm of the IPEN Adolescent study. Ester has led the work on the adaptation and validation of various versions of the Neighbourhood Environment Walkability Scale (NEWS). NEWS is the IPEN tool for assessing perceptions of the neighbourhood environment. She currently leads a team of analysts for the IPEN Adolescent study which is supported by the Australian Catholic University. The BECPR group at the Mary MacKillop Institute for Health Research is now the IPEN coordinating center.
Dr Takemi Sugiyama
Orcid ID: 0000-0002-8859-5269
Takemi Sugiyama is Professor of Healthy Cities at the Centre for Urban Transitions, Swinburne University of Technology. With extensive interdisciplinary research background in architecture, urban design and epidemiology, his research explores the nexus between urban form and population health. Currently, his research focuses on urban built environments that support adults’ active lifestyles and health, urban greenspace and health, the health impact of active and sedentary transport, and environmental approaches to reducing inequalities in health. He has published over 150 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters. He is on the editorial board of Landscape & Urban Planning, Environment & Behavior, Journal of Transport & Health, and Wellbeing, Space & Society.
Takemi joined the IPEN Adult project in 2006. He published several papers using the data from Adelaide, which is the Australian component of the IPEN. He is also the lead author of the first IPEN empirical paper, “Perceived neighbourhood environmental attributes associated with adults’ recreational walking: IPEN Adult study in 12 countries”, which was published in Health & Place in 2014. Takemi also contributed to six IPEN papers as a co-author.
Associate Professor Eva Leslie
Orcid ID:
Associate Professor Evie Leslie is a senior research fellow and behavioral scientist in the School of Psychology at Deakin University, Australia. Her research focuses on understanding the determinants of physical activity and other health behaviours. She is conducting a number of studies related to measuring and assessing the impacts of social and physical environments on physical activity behaviours and on mental health outcomes in general populations. Her work includes understanding the role of environmental perceptions, community design, green spaces, and social factors in maintaining health and well-being.
IPEN Adolescent Research Team
Primary Investigator
Professor Jo Salmon
Orcid ID:
Research Team
Jenny Veitch
Orcid ID:
Professor Ester Cerin
See IPEN Adult team
Anna Timperio
Orcid ID:
Project
Physical Activity in Localities and Community Environments (PLACE) Study, Australia (2003-2004)
The PLACE Study was designed to compare physical activity levels of residents possessing similar SES characteristics, but who lived in high- or low-walkable areas.
Responding to a challenging new research agenda, the PLACE study seeks to understand how environmental factors might operate to influence habitual physical activity. In the context of the public health goal to increase regular moderate-intensity physical activity, walking is the behaviour that is most likely to be amenable to influence. It is the most common adult non-occupational and non-household physical activity behaviour in Australia. Walking in and around local neighbourhoods is an important component of most adults’ total physical activity.
Research in the fields of transportation, planning, geography and public health aims to understand how aspects of community design may influence physical activity. A recent review summarized a number of studies that have used a high and low walkable community comparison design, with frequency of walking as the outcome. Consistently higher numbers of walking trips have been found to be related to living in high walkable compared to low walkable areas. Studies in the urban planning field are identifying complex issues in regard to how attributes of the built environment may act to influence behaviour.
Methods
The PLACE study used a stratified multi-stage cluster sampling strategy. The methods have been developed for the Australian setting based on the study design and measurement protocols from the Neighborhood Quality of Life Study (NQLS) in the USA.
First, it involved the selection of communities within four study quadrants:
- high walkability and high socio-economic status
- high walkability and low socio-economic status
- low walkability and high socio-economic status
- low walkability and low socio-economic status
Secondly, households within these communities were selected using simple random sampling.
PLACE was conducted in Adelaide, South Australia during 2003-2004 with approval from the Behavioural and Social Sciences Ethics Committee of the University of Queensland.
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