Hosted by the School of Population and Public Health, UBC
Multiple characteristics of the urban environment have been shown to influence population health and health-related behaviours, though the distribution and combined effects of these characteristics on health is less understood. The objective of our work was to develop an index of environmental quality for Canada’s largest urban areas and to assess the influence of population size on index values. We identified and selected nine datasets across five domains (outdoor air pollution, natural environments, built environments, radiation, and climate/weather). Datasets were chosen based on known impacts on human health across the life course, complete geographic coverage of the cities of interest, and temporal alignment with the 2016 Canadian census. We selected 30 cities with a population of more than 100,000 people which included 28,026 DAs and captured approximately 55% of the total Canadian population. Can-EQI scores ranged from 21.1 to 88.9 out of 100, and in Canada’s largest cities were 10.2 (95% CI: −10.7, −9.7) points lower than the smallest cities. Mapping the Can-EQI revealed high geographic variability within and between cities.
Daniel Rainham
Professor, Dalhousie University