Room to roam: If your neighborhood is walkable, your risk of diabetes shrinks.

RODALE NEWS, EMMAUS, PA—Location, location, location. It’s traditionally been the realtor’s line, but if the results of a study on neighborhoods and their impact on health published this week in the Archives of Internal Medicineare any indicator, it could soon be your doctor's favorite phrase as well. Healthy neighborhoods seem able to prevent diabetes, lowering risk of the disease by almost 40%.

THE DETAILS: Researchers at five U.S. universities studied the effects of healthy neighborhoods using data from the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis—a study of adults aged 45 to 84 years old living in The Bronx, New York, in Baltimore, Maryland, and in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. During the five-year study period, 233 of the 2,285 participants (who had lived in their neighborhoods for an average of 17 years) were newly diagnosed with type 2 diabetes—now a worldwide epidemic largely due, say the authors, to the one-two punch of physical inactivity and a calorie-dense, nutrient-poor diet. Healthy neighborhoods—that is, neighborhoods suitable environments for physical activity and in which healthful foods were easily available had a 38 percent lower incidence of diabetes than neighborhoods in which exercising and eating healthfully were more difficult.

It's not direct proof that healthy neighborhoods prevent diabetes, but the fact that the ailment was less prevalent in areas where healthy behaviors are easier to follow is suggestive. “Our study assessed whether the environment was suitable for intentional exercise and walking, such as whether there are sports clubs and facilities for exercise, and whether the neighborhood is attractive and easy for walking,” explains lead study author Amy Auchincloss, PhD, MPH, assistant professor of epidemiology and biostatistics in the School of Public Health at Drexel University in Philadelphia. “We also assessed whether the neighborhood had a large selection of fresh fruits and vegetables of high quality as well as a large selection of low-fat foods. We found that the areas that have these features were associated with lower incidence of type 2 diabetes.”