Audrey de Nazelle

Imperial College London | Imperial · Centre for Environmental Policy

Purpose Active transportation (AT) is an efficient way to increase daily physical activity and reduce pollution from the transportation sector. Mhealth has contributed to behavior change in fields like physical activity and has been explored to encourage AT. Most interventions, however, did not incorporate evidence-based behavior change techniques...

Objectives Promoting active modes of transportation such as cycling may generate important public health, economic, and climate mitigation benefits. We aim to assess mortality and morbidity impacts of cycling in a country with relatively low levels of cycling, France, along with associated monetary benefits; we further assess the potential addition...

Traffic restriction measures may create safer and healthier places for community members but may also displace traffic and air pollution to surrounding streets. Effective urban planning depends on understanding the magnitude of changes resulting from policy measures, both within and surrounding intervention areas; these are largely unstudied in the...

Traffic restriction measures may create safer and healthier places for community members but may also displace traffic and air pollution to surrounding streets. Effective urban planning depends on understanding the magnitude of changes resulting from policy measures, both within and surrounding intervention areas; these are largely unstudied in the...

A scoping review was done to assess the usage of mobile apps as a tool to support active transport. The review was done through academic literature and a search of commercial app stores.

Concept mapping is a mixed methods approach that collects ideas from multiple groups and represents them visually. This method was used collect ideas from the public on what mobile app feature they find useful in helping them decide to engage in active transport more.

Background Urban agriculture has been shown to contribute to healthy lifestyle behaviors, such as increased fruit and vegetable intake and greater exposure to greenspaces and there is plenty of evidence linking these lifestyle behaviors to better health and wellbeing. However, most evidence relates to assessing one behavior at a time despite availa...

BACKGROUND AND AIM Recent studies have shown that active travel is generally associated with lower levels of both perceived and measured stress. Specific microenvironmental conditions encountered during daily journeys, however, may lead to varying degrees of stress experienced at that moment. Our aim is to evaluate how travel mode-specific stress,...

Microplastic pollution is increasingly recognised as a global environmental challenge which stems from the rapid growth of the use of petrochemical-derived plastic. As researchers and practitioners face a myriad of environmental challenges, oceanic microplastic pollution has so far dominated interest. However, airborne microplastics present an incr...

Many aspects of our life are related to our mobility patterns and individuals can exhibit strong tendencies towards routine in their daily lives. Intrapersonal day-to-day variability in mobility patterns has been associated with mental health outcomes. The study aims were: (a) calculate intrapersonal day-to-day variability in mobility metrics for t...

Previous research has shown that walking and cycling could help alleviate stress in cities, however there is poor knowledge on how specific microenvironmental conditions encountered during daily journeys may lead to varying degrees of stress experienced at that moment. We use objectively measured data and a robust causal inference framework to addr...

Objectives: Energy transition scenarios are prospective outlooks describing combinations of changes in socio-economic systems that are compatible with climate targets. These changes could have important health co-benefits. We aimed to quantify the health benefits of physical activity caused by active transportation on all-cause mortality in the Fre...

Introduction Cities have long been known to be society’s predominant engine of innovation and wealth creation, yet they are also hotspots of pollution and disease partly due to current urban and transport practices. The aim of the European Urban Burden of Disease project is to evaluate the health burden and its determinants related to current and f...

Urban climate policy offers a significant opportunity to promote improved public health. The evidence around climate and health cobenefits is growing but has yet to translate into widespread integrated policies. This article presents two systematic reviews: first, looking at quantified cobenefits of urban climate policies, where transportation, lan...

Motivated by a growing recognition of the climate emergency, reflected in the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26), we outline untapped opportunities to improve health through ambitious climate actions in cities. Health is a primary reason for climate action yet is rarely integrated in urban climate plans as a policy goal. This is a missed opport...

Health impact simulation models are used to predict how a proposed policy or scenario will affect population health outcomes. These models represent the typically-complex systems that describe how the scenarios affect exposures to risk factors for disease or injury (e.g. air pollution or physical inactivity), and how these risk factors are related...

Background Stress is one of many ailments associated with urban living, with daily travel a potential major source. Active travel, nevertheless, has been associated with lower levels of stress compared to other modes. Earlier work has relied on self-reported measures of stress, and on study designs that limit our ability to establish causation. Ob...

Solutions that engage the public are needed to tackle air pollution. Technological approaches are insufficient to bring urban air quality to recommended target levels, and miss out on opportunities to promote health more holistically through behavioural solutions, such as active travel. Behaviour change is not straightforward, however, and is more...

Poor air quality affects the health and wellbeing of large populations around the globe. Although source controls are the most effective approaches for improving air quality and reducing health risks, individuals can also take actions to reduce their personal exposure by staying indoors, reducing physical activity, altering modes of transportation,...

Traffic-related air pollution contributes considerably to commuters' daily air pollution exposure. Ultrafine particles (UFP) is one of the most commonly measured traffic-related air pollutant during commuting. There are very limited studies on commuting exposure to air pollution in China. To fill the knowledge gap, we conducted the first study that...

Green infrastructure (GI) is seen as a win-win solution to air pollution, reducing pollutant concentrations and thus, improving human health. However, the effects of GI on air quality are still unclear, and questions have been raised about the effectiveness of GI in mitigating air pollution. Before making generalisations about the benefit of GI to...

International comparisons of cycling behaviour have typically been limited to high-income countries and often limited to the prevalence of cycling, with lack of discussions on demographic and trip characteristics. We used a combination of city, regional, and national travel surveys from 17 countries across the six continents, ranging from years 200...

Active travel (walking or cycling for transport) is considered the most sustainable form of personal transport. Yet its net effects on mobility-related CO2 emissions are complex and under-researched. Here we collected travel activity data in seven European cities and derived life cycle CO2 emissions across modes and purposes. Daily mobility-related...

Green Infrastructure (GI) in cities can have many influences on urban air quality. This work reviews the mechanisms through which GI can act and links this to the GI characteristics to understand and inform future planting decisions.

Active travel (walking or cycling for transport) is considered the most sustainable and low carbon form of getting from A to B. Yet the net effects of changes in active travel on changes in mobility-related CO2 emissions are complex and under-researched. Here we collected longitudinal data on daily travel behavior, journey purpose, as well as perso...

Background Exposure to air pollution and physical inactivity are both significant risk factors for non-communicable diseases (NCDs). These risk factors are also linked so that the change in exposure in one will impact risks and benefits of the other. These links are well captured in the active transport (walking, cycling) health impact models, in w...

The importance of setting a policy focus on promoting cycling and walking as sustainable and healthy modes of transport is increasingly recognized. However, to date a science-driven scoring system to assess the policy environment for cycling and walking is lacking. In this study, spread-sheet-based scoring systems for cycling and walking were devel...

Active travel (walking or cycling for transport) is considered the most sustainable form of personal transport. Yet its net effects on mobility-related CO2 emissions are complex and under-researched. Here we collected travel activity data in seven European cities and derived life cycle CO2 emissions across modes and purposes. Daily mobility-related...

Active travel (walking or cycling for transport) is generally good for health, the environment and the economy. Yet the net effects of changes in active travel on changes in mobility-related CO2 emissions are complex and under-researched. Here we collected longitudinal data on daily travel behavior, mode choice, as well as personal and geospatial c...

Global urban planning has promoted green infrastructure (GI) such as street trees, shrubs or other greenspace in order to mitigate air pollution. Although considerable attention has been paid to understanding particulate matter (PM) deposition on GI, there has been little focus on identifying which leaf traits might maximise airborne PM removal. Th...

Quantifying traffic contribution to air pollution in urban settings is required to inform traffic management strategies and environmental policies that aim at improving air quality. Assessments and comparative analyses across multiple urban areas are challenged by the lack of datasets and methods available for global applications. In this study, we...

Background the relationships between the built environment characteristics and personal factors influencing public transport use and the ways they interact are not well understood. Objective we aim to advance the understanding of the relationship between built environment and frequency of public transport use in seven European cities, while accoun...

Free access until June 04 2020 here: https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1avCCLDQwyMG Increased cycling uptake can improve population health, but barriers include real and perceived risks. Crash risk factors are important to understand in order to improve safety and increase cycling uptake. Many studies of cycling crash risk are based on combining dive...

Urban agriculture has increased rapidly in the Global North in recent decades. However, because most research has focused on developing countries, we still lack systematic information on the benefits, barriers, costs and risks of the practice of food production in cities of the Global North. Urban horticulture (UH) is the agriculture of plants for...

Urban transport infrastructure can result in the physical, psychological and environmental separation of neighborhoods, public space and pedestrian network, leading to negative impacts on citizens' daily commutes, social activities and health. In this paper, we simulate the impacts of road network design on individual activity patterns, travel mode...

Urban transport infrastructure can result in the physical, psychological and environmental separation of neighborhoods, public spaces and pedestrian networks, leading to negative impacts on citizens’ daily commutes, social activities and the quality of the ecosystem. An integrated design of transport infrastructure and public space is beneficial fo...

Urban transport infrastructure can result in the physical, psychological and environmental separation of neighborhoods, public spaces and pedestrian networks, leading to negative impacts on citizens’ daily commutes, social activities and the quality of the ecosystem. An integrated design of transport infrastructure and public space is beneficial fo...

Background/Aim: Not much is known about the role of repeated peak exposures in longer term exposure and health. In fact, no clear definition of peak exposure to air pollution exists. We aimed to develop an algorithm to automatically signal peaks in black carbon (BC) timeseries; we studied the role of personal characteristics, including time-activit...

Background Ubiquitous sensing technology provides novel opportunities for integrating activity patterns in exposure assessment. Theoretically promising to generate population-wide activity-based exposures, in reality strong limitations to widespread and large-scale use exist. Methods and results from three contrasting studies are presented. Methods...

Measuring bicycling behaviour is critical to bicycling research. A common study design question is whether to measure bicycling behaviour once (cross-sectional) or multiple times (longitudinal). The Physical Activity through Sustainable Transport Approaches (PASTA) project is a longitudinal cohort study of over 10,000 participants from seven Europe...

Background: Although walking for travel can help in reaching the daily recommended levels of physical activity, we know relatively little about the correlates of walking for travel in the European context. Objective: Within the framework of the European Physical Activity through Sustainable Transport Approaches (PASTA) project, we aimed to explo...

Physical activity has been widely associated with beneficial health effects. The use of electric-assist bicycles (e-bikes) can lead to increased or decreased physical activity, depending on the transport mode substituted. This study aimed to compare physical activity levels of e-bikers and conventional bicycle users (cyclists) as well as across e-...

Background: Air quality standards are typically based on long term averages - whereas a person may encounter exposure peaks throughout the day. Exposure peaks may contribute meaningfully to health impacts beyond their contribution to long term averages, and therefore should be considered alongside longer-term exposures. We aim to define and explain...

This study systematically reviewed scientific evidence linking ambient air pollution to physical activity and sedentary behavior in China. A keyword and reference search was conducted in PubMed, Web of Science, and the Cochrane Library. Predetermined selection criteria included-study designs: interventions or experiments, retrospective or prospecti...

Ambient air pollution is a leading environmental risk factor and its broad spectrum of adverse health effects includes a decrease in lung function. Socioeconomic status (SES) is known to be associated with both air pollution exposure and respiratory function. This study assesses the role of SES either as confounder or effect modifier of the associa...

Background: Sufficient sample size and minimal sample bias are core requirements in empirical data analyses. Combining opportunistic recruitment with an online survey and data collection platform yields new benefits compared to traditional recruitment approaches. Objective: The objective of this paper is to report on the success of different recru...

BACKGROUND: Sufficient sample size and minimal sample bias are core requirements for empirical data analyses. Combining opportunistic recruitment with a Web-based survey and data-collection platform yields new benefits over traditional recruitment approaches. OBJECTIVE: This paper aims to report the success of different recruitment methods and obta...

Health impact simulation models are used to predict how a proposed intervention or scenario will affect public health outcomes, based on available data and knowledge of the process. The outputs of these models are uncertain due to uncertainty in the structure and inputs to the model. In order to assess the extent of uncertainty in the outcome we mu...

Aim: To assess the main and interaction effects of black carbon and physical activity on arterial blood pressure in a healthy adult population from three European cities using objective personal measurements over short-term (hours and days) and long-term exposure. Methods: A panel study of 122 healthy adults was performed in three European citie...

Global rates of urbanisation are on the rise. By 2050 around 70% of the ten billion global population is expected to be living in cities. Whilst cities are centres of education, wealth creation, innovation and progress they are simultaneously characterized by pollution, congestion, noise, heat and overcrowding, adversely impacting human health on a...

Exposure to air pollution is affected by human behaviour, and has consequences for individual and collective health. One way to lessen the health effects of air pollution is to change personal travel behaviour with the help of new information, communication and sensing technologies. Our social research tracked the experiences of participants, air q...

Background: Transport mode choice has been associated with different health risks and benefits depending on which transport mode is used. We aimed to evaluate the association between different transport modes use and several health and social contact measures. Methods: We based our analyses on the Physical Activity through Sustainable Transport...

Cycling in urban environments provides many benefits to people. However, planning of cycling infrastructures in large cities faces numerous challenges and requires better understanding of both the factors enabling cycling as well as barriers to it, determined by particular local context. While there is a growing body of research that tackle the bik...

Background: In the fight against rising overweight and obesity levels, and unhealthy urban environments, the renaissance of active mobility (cycling and walking as a transport mode) is encouraging. Transport mode has been shown to be associated to body mass index (BMI), yet there is limited longitudinal evidence demonstrating causality. We aimed to...

Subjective perception of air pollution is important and can have impacts on health in its own rights, can lead to protective behaviour, or it can be leveraged to engage citizens and stakeholders in support of cleaner air policies. The aim of the current analysis was to examine associations between level of concern over health effects of air polluti...

Background: Exposure to air pollution during pregnancy may increase attention-deficit/ hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms in children, but findings have been inconsistent. We aimed to study this association in a collaborative study of eight European population-based birth/child cohorts, including 29,127 mother-child pairs. Methods: Air pollu...

Cycling in urban environments provides many benefits to people. However, planning of cycling infrastructures in large cities faces numerous challenges and requires better understanding of both the factors enabling cycling as well as barriers to it, determined by particular local context. While there is a growing body of research that tackle the bik...