Limited-resource and minority families suffer disproportionately from obesity, which may be exacerbated forfamilies living in disadvantaged, rural areas. Improvements in food choice and healthful eating are of criticalimportance in reducing the impact of obesity. Building on current work with community partners, our centralhypothesis is that environmental exposures to conditions that facilitate or constrain food choice influencebehaviors and limit healthful eating. Using a social-ecological approach, our overall goal is to examine theinterplay of behavioral (individual and family) and environmental (home, social, and neighborhood/community) factors, food choice, and healthful eating in limited-resource African American, Hispanic, andnon-Hispanic White families of seven rural Central Texas counties. Our interdisciplinary team will use acombination of multimethod and mixed methods designs - qualitative (key informant interviews, focusgroups, participant observations, and in-depth interviews) and quantitative (comprehensive in-home surveyof 969 adults) research methods and state-of-the art Geographic Information System (GIS) technology.
Our aims are to: (1) Evaluate the association of neighborhood characteristics (as measured by Census blockgroup characteristics) with food environment quality (i.e., current food accessibility, variety, and cost of foodsin local food stores), and to develop a geocoded database for food environmental risk assessment ofminority or limited resource families in seven rural counties of the Brazos Valley (Burleson, Grimes, Leon,Madison, Robertson, Waller, and Washington counties). (2) Describe and interpret current family foodstrategies, as well as contextual factors, such as physical (home and neighborhood) and social environment,cultural patterns, community infrastructure, and current family food behaviors, in a purposeful sample of lowincomeAfrican American, Hispanic, and non-Hispanic White families in the seven counties. (3) Evaluate theinterplay of behavioral (individual and family) and address-specific environmental (home, social, andneighborhood/ community) factors, food choice, and healthful eating in a representative sample of 969African-American, Hispanic, and non-Hispanic White adults in the seven counties. This will contribute tounderstanding the extent to which behavioral and environmental factors interact to influence healthful eating,which will facilitate the targeting of effective policy and programmatic changes into the community setting.
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