Cities need to be designed to promote healthy living.
This is the message from Richmond’s medical health officer Dr. Meena Dawar as modern lifestyles tend to be based around sedentary activity – driving to work, sitting at work and sitting in front of screens in the evening.
Although, she noted, the City of Richmond does a lot of work to promote physical activity, and is “going in the right direction” with various food and recreational strategies.
“The municipality tries very hard to pay attention to this,” she said.
However, in many ways, physical activity has been “designed out of our lives,” Dawar told the Richmond News.
Richmond residents have the highest life expectancy in B.C., but this is largely based on healthy immigrants moving to the city.
After they arrive, though, it might be a different story as “first generation Canadians acquire the habits of other Canadians,” Dawar explained.
The BC Centre for Disease Control, in conjunction with VCH, is currently conducting a health, mental well-being and activity survey and Dawar is encouraging Richmond residents to take part.
If they get enough responses, it will allow the health authority to make more neighbourhood-specific decisions - local information so local action can be taken, Dawar said.
The goal is 4,000 responses, but they need 2,500 more to reach this.
The survey is in seven languages, and can take up to 20 minutes, although it might be shorter.
While the survey asks for respondents’ postal codes, Dawar said the information will be delinked and anonymized so that personal information won’t be identified with any individuals.
And information would never be released by postal code, she added.
There are some gift card prizes being given out for taking the survey, although respondents need to include their email address in order to qualify.
Dawar recently made a presentation to city council when they were considering whether to go ahead with a multi-use pathway on Steveston Highway that will eventually extend from Railway Avenue to Shell Road.
Dawar noted there are signs of youth being less active than before.
This started during the pandemic as everyone was told to stick close to home, schools were closed and kids gravitated even more to screens.
Eighty per cent of youth in Richmond reported they cut back on their physical activity during the pandemic, and 90 per cent said their screen time increased.
To combat this sedentary lifestyle, Dawar encourages people to purposefully weave physical activity into their days, be it by stretching regularly or getting light movement throughout the workday.
She told city council she herself learned to ride a bike as an adult, and now regularly bikes to work in Richmond.
To take part in the BC Speak Survey, click here.
