A fascinating new study is questioning whether subsidized housing projects may actually be promoting poor health.

The study was an experiment that set out to find out what happens to low-income women with children who move from a neighbourhood with a high rate of poverty, to a lower-poverty neighborhood.

It found that the low-income women and their children who had moved to less impoverished neighborhoods had a lower risk of developing serious diseases like diabetes and extreme obesity.

The researchers behind the study say it is yet more evidence that where you live can determine your health.

For the study, close to 4,500 poor women and their children were enrolled in a residential mobility program called "Moving to Opportunity," between 1994 and 1998.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development ran the program in five U.S. cities: Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and New York.

With the help of a random lottery, some of the families that volunteered for the program were offered the chance to use a housing voucher subsidy to move into a lower-poverty community. Other families were randomly assigned to a control group that received no special assistance.

Ten years later, the researchers checked in on the families. They measured their heights and weights and collected blood samples to test for diabetes.

They found that among the women in the control group – the group that didn't move out of their high-poverty neighbourhoods -- 17 per cent were morbidly obese, with a body mass index at or above 40. As well, 20 per cent had diabetes.

But in the group of women who moved to lower-poverty neighborhoods, the rates of morbid obesity and diabetes were both about 20 per cent lower than in the control group.

About 14 per cent of those who left the projects were extremely obese, and about 16 per cent had diabetes.

Dr. Robert Dent, of the Ottawa Hospital Bariatric Centre, who was not involved in the study, says that while the differences between the two groups weren't huge, it was still significant.

"We now understand that even small changes in weight have a big impact on diseases like diabetes and heart disease, so this is not only statistically significant but clinically significant," he told CTV News.

Jens Ludwig, the study's lead and a professor of Social Service Administration, Law and Public Policy at the University of Chicago, says there are a few reasons why neighbourhood income might affect obesity and diabetes.

Poor neighbourhoods generally have less access to healthy foods and opportunities for physical activity than poor neighbourhoods. In some cases, even going for a walk in a low-income neighbourhood can be unsafe. There also might be less access to medical care in low-income communities.

The stress of living in low-income neighbourhoods might also play a role.

Observers, like Lorna Cue of the Ontario Healthy Communities Association, say recreating this study isn't the long-term solution.

"We wouldn't be suggesting people move from high poverty to low poverty. What we want to see is this type of community for everyone, that we all have neighbourhoods that promote health," she said.

Dent says the study shows that the design of our cities can have a big effect on our collective health.

"We can't move people to better neighbourhoods. I think we have to go back to the question: can we make the neighbourhoods better? It poses a question and further research will have to go into that," he says.

Advocates say more communities should work on making themselves more walkable and more livable, armed with scientific proof that health does begin at home.

With a report from CTV's Avis Favaro and producer Elizabeth St. Philip