James Woodcock

University of Cambridge | Cam · MRC Epidemiology Unit

Using a health impact assessment framework, we estimated the population health effects arising from alternative land-use and transport policy initiatives in six cities. Land-use changes were modelled to reflect a compact city in which land-use density and diversity were increased and distances to public transport were reduced to produce low motoris...

Aims/hypothesis: Inverse associations between physical activity (PA) and type 2 diabetes mellitus are well known. However, the shape of the dose-response relationship is still uncertain. This review synthesises results from longitudinal studies in general populations and uses non-linear models of the association between PA and incident type 2 diab...

The purpose of the study was to describe cyclists and cycling trips, and to explore correlates, time trends and health consequences of cycling in São Paulo, Brazil from 1997-2012. Cross-sectional analysis using repeated São Paulo Household Travel Surveys (HTS). At all time periods cycling was a minority travel mode in São Paulo (1,174 people with c...

Active travel (cycling, walking) is beneficial for the health due to increased physical activity (PA). However, active travel may increase the intake of air pollution, leading to negative health consequences. We examined the risk–benefit balance between active travel related PA and exposure to air pollution across a range of air pollution and PA sc...

In this paper we represent a systematic review of stated preference studies examining the extent to which cycle infrastructure preferences vary by gender and by age. A search of online, English-language academic and policy literature was followed by a three-stage screening process to identify relevant studies. We found fifty-four studies that inves...

The Integrated Transport and Health Impact Modelling Tool for Global Cities (ITHIM-Global) was developed as an open-source tool to assess the impacts of transport mode shifts on public health and the environment in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) where the need for such assessment is urgent and rising. The model simulates the impacts on al...

Recent advances in data science and urban environmental health research utilise large-scale databases (100s–1000s of cities) to explore the complex interplay of urban characteristics such as city form and size, climate, mobility, exposure, and environmental health impacts. Cities are still hotspots of air pollution and noise, suffer urban heat isla...

Shifting to healthy, sustainable transport modes is essential to reduce greenhouse gases emissions, improve air quality, and promote physical activity in European cities. To date, a major barrier to monitoring progress towards this objective has been the absence of harmonized passenger transport data across cities. This Perspective synthesizes the...

Introduction There is limited research evaluating 20 mph speed limit interventions, and long-term assessments are seldom conducted either globally or within the UK. This study evaluated the impact of the phased 20 mph speed limit implementation on road traffic collisions and casualties in the City of Edinburgh, UK over approximately 3 years post im...

Shifting to healthy, sustainable transport modes is essential to reduce greenhouse gases emissions, improve air quality, and promote physical activity in European cities. To date, a major barrier to monitoring progress towards this objective has been the absence of harmonized passenger transport data across cities. This Perspective synthesizes the...

Abstract Background Modelling studies consistently demonstrated significant health impacts resulting from shifts to active transport, such as walking and cycling, compared to other modes. However, limited understanding of diverse modelling approaches hinders the effectiveness of existing models in advancing future endeavours. Our study aims to comp...

The MATSim user meeting is the annual meeting for users and developers of the open-source MATSim agent-based transport simulation tool. This study presented a flexible, open-source tool to efficiently calculate walkability and cyclability indicators at any precision and using any impedance and decay function. This submission won the ‘best paper’ aw...

Understanding urban travel behaviour is crucial for planning healthy and sustainable cities. Africa is urbanising at one of the fastest rates in the world and urgently needs this knowledge. However, the data and literature on urban travel behaviour, their correlates, and their variation across African cities are limited. We aimed to describe and co...

E-scooters are a relatively new mode of travel in the UK and their impacts on physical and mental health are uncertain. Although their use does not involve physical activity directly, through walking or cycling, they might provide other well-being benefits. Such effects will likely vary according to the user and the context. We aim to assess whethe...

Accessibility is a key instrument for assessing active mobility. However, accessibility measures often suffer from biases due to spatial aggregation, isochrones with arbitrary cutoffs , and distance-based cost functions that ignore the route conditions. Previous literature has addressed these issues individually, but not holistically. This study ap...

The Human Mobility Transition model describes shifts in mobility dynamics and transport systems. The aspirational stage, ‘human urbanism’, is characterised by high active travel, universal public transport, low private vehicle use and equitable access to transport. We explored factors associated with travel behaviour in Africa and the Caribbean, in...

Objective To estimate the dose–response associations between non-occupational physical activity and several chronic disease and mortality outcomes in the general adult population. Design Systematic review and cohort-level dose-response meta-analysis. Data sources PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science and reference lists of published studies. Eligibilit...

Road traffic noise is one of the main environmental risks to health and wellbeing. We aimed to provide an in-depth assessment of available road traffic noise data and to estimate population exposure and health impacts for cities in Europe. We analyzed 724 cities and 25 greater cities in 25 European countries. We retrieved road traffic strategic noi...

The ‘multistate lifetable’ is a widely used model for the long-term health impacts of public health interventions. It requires estimates of the incidence, case fatality, and sometimes also remission rates, for multiple diseases by age and gender. The case fatality is the rate of death from a disease for people with a disease, and is commonly not ob...

Active travel, as a key form of physical activity, can help offset noncommunicable diseases as rapidly urbanising countries undergo epidemiological transition. In Africa a human mobility transition is underway as cities sprawl and motorization rises and preserving active travel modes (walking, cycling and public transport) is important for public h...

Background Ambient air pollution is a pervasive and ubiquitous hazard, which has been linked to premature morbidity and a growing number of morbidity endpoints. Air pollution may be linked to neurodegeneration, and via this or other pathways, to neurodegenerative diseases. Emerging evidence suggests that air pollution may contribute to neurodegener...

Key messages: -Transport is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions and an important determinant of population health -A rapid transition to electric vehicles is needed but will not on its own solve transport related health problems or achieve zero greenhouse gas emissions fast enough -A holistic approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions cau...

Background Transport initiatives such as 20-mph (≈30-km/h) speed limits are anticipated to result in fewer road casualties and improve perceptions of safety, leading to increases in active travel. Lower speeds may also lead to more pleasant environments in which to live, work and play. Objectives The main objective was to evaluate and understand t...

Background Travel has individual, societal and planetary health implications. We explored socioeconomic and gendered differences in travel behaviour in Africa, to develop an understanding of travel-related inequity. Methods We conducted a mixed-methods systematic review (PROSPERO CRD42019124802). In 2019, we searched MEDLINE, TRID, SCOPUS, Web of...

The literature on urban travel behaviour in Africa is sparse, limiting our understanding of how urban transport policies respond to human and planetary needs. We conducted a cross-sectional household telephone survey on 1334 participants, using a 24 h time-use diary, to investigate travel behaviour and barriers to active travel (walking and cycling...

There is a lack of data on physical activity (PA), active travel, and the comparison of measurement instruments in low-resource settings. The objective of this paper is to describe PA behaviour and the agreement of walking estimates from the Global Physical Activity Questionnaire (GPAQ) and the travel diary in a low-resource setting. We used a cros...

Diabetes and obesity present a high and increasing burden of disease in the Caribbean that have failed to respond to prevention policies and interventions. These conditions are the result of a complex system of drivers and determinants that can make it difficult to predict the impact of interventions. In partnership with stakeholders, we developed...

Importance: Depression is the leading cause of mental health-related disease burden and may be reduced by physical activity, but the dose-response relationship between activity and depression is uncertain. Objective: To systematically review and meta-analyze the dose-response association between physical activity and incident depression from pub...

Responses to COVID-19 altered environmental exposures and health behaviours associated with non-communicable diseases. We aimed to (1) quantify changes in nitrogen dioxide (NO 2), noise, physical activity, and greenspace visits associated with COVID-19 policies in the spring of 2020 in Barcelona (Spain), Vienna (Austria), and Stockholm (Sweden), an...

Background Road traffic is the main source of environmental noise in European cities and one of the main environmental risks to health and wellbeing. In this study we aimed to provide an in-depth assessment of available road traffic noise data and to estimate population exposure and health impacts for cities in Europe. Methods We conducted the ana...

Objective To estimate dose-response associations between non-occupational physical activity and multiple chronic disease outcomes in the general adult population. Eligibility criteria Prospective cohort studies with (a) general population samples >10,000 adults, (b) ≥3 exposure categories, and (c) risk measures and confidence intervals for all-cau...

Purpose of Review Features and attributes of the built environment (BE) impact positively and negatively on health, especially in cities facing unprecedented urban population growth and mass motorization. A common approach to assess the health impacts of built environment is health impact assessment (HIA), but it is rarely used in low- and middle-i...

Responses to COVID-19 altered environmental exposures and health behaviours associated with non-communicable diseases. We aimed to (1) quantify changes in nitrogen dioxide (NO2), noise, physical activity, and greenspace visits associated with COVID-19 policies in the spring of 2020 in Barcelona (Spain), Vienna (Austria), and Stockholm (Sweden), and...

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...

Prior studies show that the Built Environment (BE) can influence route and mode choice, increasing the uptake of active modes and reducing car dominance. One of the main challenges in establishing such relationships between the BE and travel behaviour is the unavailability of micro-scale BE data. This study presents a methodology for harmonising an...

There is lack of literature on international comparison of gender differences in the use of active travel modes. We used population-representative travel surveys for 19 major cities across 13 countries and 6 continents, representing a mix of cites from low-and-middle income (n = 8) and high-income countries (n = 11). In all the cities, females are...

Objectives Traffic speed is important to public health as it is a major contributory factor to collision risk and casualty severity. 20mph (32km/h) speed limit interventions are an increasingly common approach to address this transport and health challenge, but a more developed evidence base is needed to understand their effects. This study describ...

Physical inactivity is increasing in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), where noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), urbanisation and sedentary living are rapidly growing in tandem. Increasing active living requires the participation of multiple sectors, yet it is unclear whether physical activity (PA)-relevant sectors in LMICs are prioritising PA...

A widely-used model for determining the long-term health impacts of public health interventions, often called a "multistate lifetable", requires estimates of incidence, case fatality, and sometimes also remission rates, for multiple diseases by age and gender. Generally, direct data on both incidence and case fatality are not available in every dis...

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...

Travel has individual, societal and planetary health implications. We explored socioeconomic and gendered differences in travel behaviour in Africa, to develop an understanding of travel-related inequity. We conducted a mixed-methods systematic review (PROSPERO CRD42019124802). In 2019, we searched MEDLINE, TRID, SCOPUS, Web of Science, LILACS, Sci...

Non-technical summary We summarize some of the past year's most important findings within climate change-related research. New research has improved our understanding about the remaining options to achieve the Paris Agreement goals, through overcoming political barriers to carbon pricing, taking into account non-CO 2 factors, a well-designed implem...

The World Health Organization (WHO) Global Action Plan on Physical Activity recommends adopting a systems approach to implementing and tailoring actions according to local contexts. We held group model-building workshops with key stakeholders in the Caribbean region to develop a causal loop diagram to describe the system driving the increasing phys...

Introduction The Propensity to Cycle Tool (PCT) is a widely used free, open source and publicly available tool for modelling cycling uptake and corresponding health and carbon impacts in England and Wales. In this paper we present the methods for our new individual-level modelling representing all commuters in England and Wales. Methods Scenario c...

Introduction Reductions in traffic speed can potentially offer multiple health and public health benefits. In 2016, implementation of 20mph (30kph) speed limit interventions began in Edinburgh (city-wide) and Belfast (city centre). The aims of this paper are to describe 1) the broad theoretical approach and design of two natural experimental studie...

Background Health impact assessments of alternative travel patterns are urgently needed to inform transport and urban planning in African cities, but none exists so far. Objective To quantify the health impacts of changes in travel patterns in the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area, Ghana. Methods We estimated changes to population exposures to phys...

The COVID-19 pandemic is causing mass disruption to our daily lives. We integrate mobility data from mobile devices and area-level data to study the walking patterns of 1.62 million anonymous users in 10 metropolitan areas in the United States. The data covers the period from mid-February 2020 (pre-lockdown) to late June 2020 (easing of lockdown re...

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...

Introduction High quality evaluations of new walking and cycling routes are scarce and understanding contextual mechanisms influencing outcomes is limited. Using different types of data we investigate how context is associated with change in use of new and upgraded walking and cycling infrastructure, and the association between infrastructure use a...

Introduction This paper analyses three years’ data from the People and Places longitudinal study. The study examines the travel behaviour impacts of major investments in active travel infrastructure in three Outer London boroughs (the ‘mini- Hollands programme’). Methods The People and Places survey, conducted annually in May-June, treats the mini...

Background nationally determined contributions (NDCs) serve to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement of staying “well below 2°C”, which could also yield substantial health co-benefits in the process. However, existing NDC commitments are inadequate to achieve this goal. Placing health as a key focus of the NDCs could present an opportunity to incre...

At the time of writing, it is unclear how the COVID-19 pandemic will play out in rapidly urbanising regions of the world. In these regions, the realities of large overcrowded informal settlements, a high burden of infectious and non-communicable diseases, as well as malnutrition and precarity of livelihoods, have raised added concerns about the pot...

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused mass disruption to our daily lives. Mobility restrictions implemented to reduce the spread of COVID-19 have impacted walking behavior, but the magnitude and spatio-temporal aspects of these changes have yet to be explored. Walking is the most common form of physical activity and non-motorized transport, and so has a...

A major limitation of road injury research in low-and-middle income countries is the lack of consistent data across the settings, such as traffic counts, to measure traffic risk. This study presents a novel method in which traffic volume of heavy vehicles-trucks and buses-is estimated by identifying these vehicles from satellite imagery of Google E...

Background: Modeling suggests that climate change mitigation actions can have substantial human health benefits that accrue quickly and locally. Documenting the benefits can help drive more ambitious and health-protective climate change mitigation actions; however, documenting the adverse health effects can help to avoid them. Estimating the health...

The World Health Organization’s Health Economic Assessment Tool (HEAT) for walking and cycling is a user-friendly web-based tool to assess the health impacts of active travel. HEAT, developed over 10 years ago, has been used by researchers, planners and policymakers alike in appraisals of walking and cycling policies at both national and more local...

Background Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are the leading cause of death globally. While upstream approaches to tackle NCD risk factors of poor quality diets and physical inactivity have been trialled in high income countries (HICs), there is little evidence from low and middle-income countries (LMICs) that bear a disproportionate NCD burden. Sub...

The World Health Organization’s Health Economic Assessment Tool (HEAT) for walking and cycling is a user-friendly web-based tool to assess health impacts of active travel. HEAT, developed over 10 years ago, has been used by researchers, planners and policymakers alike in appraisals of walking and cycling policies of both national and more local sca...

Introduction: This paper analyses three years’ data from the People and Places longitudinal study. This study examines the travel behaviour impact of major investments in active travel infrastructure in three Outer London boroughs (the ‘mini-Hollands programme’).Methods: The People and Places survey, conducted annually in May-June, treats the mini-...