Approved Research

The associations between long-time commuting and cardiovascular diseases

Lay summary

We aim to examine the association between the commuting time and incidence and mortality rate of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and its risk factors among the general population aged 40 to 69 years from UK Biobank.

Active commuting has been considered and proved by many studies as an important life-behavior variable that can reduce the risk and mortality of CVD in countries from Europe, North America, and Asia. The mode of transportation, such as cycling and walking, was used by most previous studies as the main explanatory variable. It was also considered as a part of physical activities with occupational and leisure-time activities. However, small number of studies focused on the relationship between commuting distance or time and CVD and its risk factors. Increasing commuting distance and time were proved to be positively associated with the clinically important risk factors of CVD, such as body mass index (BMI), among Hongkong and US population. The association between commuting time and CVD and its risk factors need to be further validated in the population from UK and Europe.

We estimate that it may take us 1-2 months to receive data, 2-4 months to clean the data, create variables, and build models, and 2-3 months to complete the paper writing.

Our study provides another perspective on the relationship between commuting and CVD and its risk factors. Instead of looking at the mode of transportation, we care more about how the time you spent on the road from homes to workplaces affect the risk and death rate of CVD. The result of study may help government and public health system design and build infrastructural facilities and neighborhoods in increasingly compact and complicated city. It can also help those people with high risk of CVD and diabetes to wisely decide their living places with relatively "healthy" commuting time and distance to their workplaces.