• Jaana I Halonen, Sari Stenholm, Mika Kivimäki, Jaana Pentti, S V Subramanian, Ichiro Kawachi, and Jussi Vahtera.
• Finnish Institute Occupational Health, Kuopio, Finland. Electronic address: jaana.halonen@ttl.fi.
• Prev Med. 2015 Apr 1; 73: 10-4.

ObjectiveWe examined whether change in distance to or number of sports facilities is related to change in metabolic equivalent task (MET) hours/week.Method25,834 Finnish Public Sector study cohort participants reported their weekly physical activity in 2000 and 2008. Distances from each participant's home to the nearest facility and number of facilities within 500m from home were calculated from geographic coordinates. We assessed changes in weekly MET hours of physical activity between the baseline and the follow-up in relation to change in distance to the nearest facility (remained close, decreased, remained distant, increased) and number of facilities <500m from home (remained high, increased, remained low, decreased).ResultsThe average decrease in MET hours was greater for those whose distance to a sports facility increased (-1.4 (95% CI -3.8--0.96)) (vs. remained close). The same was observed for those for whom the number of facilities near home decreased (-2.35 (95% CI -4.84-0.14)) (vs. remained high). Increase in availability was not related to increase in MET hours.ConclusionsAn increase in distance to and decrease in number of sports facilities were associated with a decrease in physical activity suggesting that changes in availability of facilities may affect physical activity levels.Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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