A study from USask is helping to draw links between public transportation and people’s physical and mental wellbeing.

The study has been under way for 10 years and is expected to continue for another five years after the research received a grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

The idea for the research was to look into how things outside of healthcare, such as wait times and medical interventions, effects a person’s wellbeing.

Dr. Daniel Fuller, an associate professor in USask’s College of Medicine and the lead investigator for the project, said the research saw decreases in participation and peoples well being during COVID, but that levels are heading back to normal now.

‘What we’ve learned from the data is that one of things that’s good about public transit in general is that people tend to get sufficient physical activity because there walking from the bus stop to home, or from the bus stop to work or school.”

Fuller encouraged people to keep an eye out for recruitment signs during early September, since that’s when the next wave of data collection starts for the research.