The neighbourhood environment provides both a social and physical context that is thought to have an effect on behaviours that may influence weight gain. There is limited research in this area on pre-school children. The objective of this study is to examine the association between the built environment and body mass index (BMI) among pre-school-age children while adjusting for known individual level factors associated with pre-school obesity. A cross sectional study of children one to five years of age was conducted using individual level data from the TARGet Kids! cohort in Toronto, Canada which includes prospectively collected data from 3928 children between September 2008 and June 2012. We characterized a child's neighbourhood using a validated neighbourhood walkability index based on 1) car ownership; 2) population per square kilometer of residential area; 3) all services per 10,000 population; 4) average distance from residential points to nearest five retail locations; 5) crime per 100,000).The main outcome was child's zBMI. The mean age of participants at baseline was 33.5 months. The proportion of children included in TARGetKids! with zBMI >1 (overweight) was 20.5% and zBMI >2 (obese) was 4.8%. The outcome, zBMI, was adjusted for: gender, ethnicity, age of child, birth weight, parental BMI, mother's education, free play outdoors, immigration status and neighbourhood level income. The mean zBMI decreased as the walkability of the neighbourhood increased. Compared to the most walkable neighbourhood, the average zBMI of the least walkable was 0.269 vs 0.063 in the most walkable neighbourhood in Toronto. This relationship was maintained after adjustment for individual level factors. Living in a walkable neighbourhood was associated with lower zBMI among preschool-age children after adjustment for individual level factors known to be associated with obesity in young children. Identifying modifiable built environment features that could mitigate the epidemic of childhood obesity could have population wide impact on the health of our children and the adults that they subsequently become.

Introduction: People immigrating to more westernized societies than their own face an increased risk of diabetes and other obesity-related diseases. We examined the impact of neighbourhood walkability on the risk of diabetes among recent immigrants to Canada compared to that of longer-term residents.,

Aims: There is an association between neighborhood characteristics and the health and health behaviors of residents. This is particularly evident in the development of obesity and type 2 diabetes, conditions which are greatly influenced by a person's physical activity and diet. Herein we describe the development and validation of an urban residential 'Activity-Friendly Index' (AFI). We also examine how activity friendliness relates to obesity and diabetes.

As a result of deinstitutionalization over the past half-century, police have become frontline mental health care workers. This study assessed five-year patterns of police calls for suicidal behavior in Toronto, Canada. Police responded to an average of 1,422 calls for suicidal behavior per year, 15 percent of which involved completed suicides (24 percent of male callers and 8 percent of female callers). Calls for suicidal behavior increased by 4 percent among males and 17 percent among females over the study period. The rate of completed suicides decreased by 22 percent among males and 31 percent among females. Compared with women, men were more likely to die from physical (as opposed to chemical) methods (22 percent and 43 percent, respectively). The study results highlight the importance of understanding changes in patterns and types of suicidal behavior to police training and preparedness.

This paper presents the main findings from a collaborative community/university research project in Canada. The goal of the project was to improve access to community health information, and in so doing, enhance our knowledge of the development of community health information resources and community/university collaboration. The project built on a rich history of community/university collaboration in Southeast Toronto (SETO), and employed an interdisciplinary applied research and action design. Specific project objectives were to: (1) develop via active community/university collaboration a geographic information system (GIS) for ready access to routinely collected health data, and to study logistical, conceptual and technical problems encountered during system development; and (2) to document and analyze issues that can emerge in the process of community/university research collaboration. System development involved iteration through community user assessment of need, development or refinement of the GIS, and assessment of the GIS by community users. Collaborative process assessment entailed analysis of archival material, interviews with investigators and participant observation. Over the course of the project, a system was successfully developed, and favorably assessed by users. System development problems fell into four main areas: maintaining user involvement in system development, understanding and integrating data, bringing disparate data sources together, and making use of assembled data. Major themes emerging from the community/university collaborative research process included separate community and university cultures, time as an important issue for all involved, and the impact of uncertainty and ambiguity on the collaborative process.