Do Population-Level Differences in Food Environment Near Schools Explain Population-Level Trends in Child Obesity Disparities?

• Activity Number: 76 - Contributed Poster Presentations: Section on Statistics in Epidemiology
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Monday, August 3, 2020 : 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistics in Epidemiology
• Author(s): Kelsey Alexovitz* and Brisa Sanchez and Emma V. Sanchez-Vaznaugh and Mika Matsuzaki
• Companies: Drexel University and Drexel University and San Francisco State University and San Francisco State University
• Keywords: Built-Environment; Food Environment; Multilevel Models

Abstract

Despite several attempts to curb the childhood obesity epidemic, obesity has remained unabated for low income minority children. At the same time, food environments near schools located in low income minority communities have observed increases in fast food availability. This analysis examines the population trends in child obesity disparities from 2001 through 2010, and whether changes in food environments near schools partially explain the disparities. The analysis is conducted using approximately 2 million child-level BMI records from children attending 5th, 7th and 9th grade public schools in California. We use multilevel models to ?adjust for clustering of children within schools, and models are stratified by income to enable us to examine disparities within income categories.