Dear AJPM  reader,


AJPM is pleased to announce our 2018 Article of the Year, “ Walking in Relation to Mortality in a Large Prospective Cohort of Older U.S. Adults ,” which was published in our January 2018 issue.

Each year AJPM editors and representatives from the journal’s governing board select our Article of the Year based on a number of criteria including scientific rigor, downloads, mentions on social and mainstream media, and perhaps most importantly, the contribution the article makes to the fields of preventive medicine and population health.

The 2018 Article of the Year examines the relationship between walking and total mortality in the older adults. Authors from the American Cancer Society found any walking is associated with lower all-cause mortality in older adults, even when minimum recommendations are not met, compared with those who were inactive. Walking is the most common form of exercise in older adults so the study has major public health implications by showing that even the small or modest amounts of physical activity can lead to significant health gains in the elderly.

In the video below, the article’s lead author, Dr. Alpa Patel, Senior Scientific Director of Epidemiology Research at the American Cancer Society, discusses the importance of reducing disease burden as the population ages and the role that physical activity plays in disease prevention.