Built Environment and Obesity Risk Factors: Do Where You Live, Work, and Commute Influence Your Weight Status? A Spatial Analysis of Elementary School Personnel in New Orleans

• Activity Number: 126
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Monday, August 1, 2011 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
• Sponsor: Section on Health Policy Statistics
• Author(s): Adriana Cristina Dornelles*+ and Rice Janet and Webber Larry and Diego Rose
• Companies: Tulane University and Tulane University and Tulane University and Tulane University
• Keywords: multilevel ; BMI ; obesity ; neighborhood ; food business ; food environment

Abstract

Obesity has become a national concern and has reached epidemic proportions. Environmental factors may contribute to the increasing prevalence of obesity. To date, most of the studies assessing the relationship between weight and aspects of food environment have focused on one environment at time: home or work site. However, on a daily basis, most individuals experience more than one environment. People are exposed to their neighborhood and worksite environments and to the surrounding areas of their back-and-forth trajectory to work. Due to the fact that each of these environments may have several food outlets, it seems plausible that all of those environments will have an effect on the individual's body mass index (BMI). This paper explored the impact of those three environments, separately and together, on people's BMI. We used data from elementary school employees in the New Orleans metropolitan area and Dunn & Bradstreet data for the food businesses. A cross-sectional design was used to associate the built environments and BMI. Spatial and multilevel analysis was utilized in order to explore the impact of predictors at the individual and environmental levels.