ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Environmental Health and Exposome
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1601102
This article is part of the Research TopicGreening Urban Spaces and Human Health, Volume IIIView all 9 articles
Impact of Green Infrastructure in Smart Elderly Care Communities on the Health of the Elderly and the Exploration of Optimization Paths
Provisionally accepted
- 1Journalism and Communications College, Jilin Normal University, Changchun, China
- 2College of art and design, Changchun Guanghua University, Changchun, China
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This study investigates the multidimensional impacts of green infrastructure (GI) in smart elderly care communities on the physical health, psychological well-being, and social interactions of older adults, while proposing optimization strategies for GI design to advance healthy aging policies. Leveraging longitudinal data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS), 2012-2020), panel regression models reveal that GI coverage significantly reduces chronic/acute disease incidence (-0.34**), alleviates depression (-0.14), anxiety (-0.12), and enhances subjective well-being (0.45) and social interaction frequency (0.29**). Heterogeneity analyses highlight stronger health benefits for males and adults aged 70-79. Structural equation modeling (SEM) further demonstrates that GI mitigates Coronavirus Disease (COVID)-19 prevalence by improving air quality (indirect effect: -0.15) and regulating ambient temperature (-0.10), with accessibility and distribution uniformity amplifying these effects. Innovatively, this research bridges environmental health mechanisms with smart technology integration, offering actionable insights for GI optimization-such as enhancing spatial equity, connectivity, and microclimate resilience-to inform age-friendly urban planning and pandemic preparedness. The findings underscore GI as a critical public health intervention, advocating for policy frameworks that prioritize high-quality, accessible green spaces in elderly care communities to synergistically address health promotion, social equity, and climate adaptation.
Keywords: green infrastructure, Elderly health, Influencing factors, Path optimization, Smart Elderly Care Community
Received: 27 Mar 2025; Accepted: 15 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wang, Gao and Song. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Peijuan Song, College of art and design, Changchun Guanghua University, Changchun, China
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