Summary
parkrun is an international movement which organises free weekly 5km running events. It has been widely praised for encouraging inactive individuals to participate in physical activity. Recently, parkrun received funding to establish 200 new events across England, specifically targeted at deprived communities. This project aims to support the parkrun’s extension.
We conducted ecological spatial analyses, using data on 455 parkrun events, 2,842 public green spaces, and 32,844 English census areas. Poisson regression was applied to investigate the relationships between the distances to events, index of multiple deprivation, and other area characteristics, and parkrun participation rates. We ran a location-allocation analysis, to identify optimal locations for future events, and developed an interactice online map to explore the results.