Food choices and body mass index are important mediators of chronic diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease and certain cancers. Both the neighborhood and the home food environment may play an important role in influencing individual food choices and body mass index. However, current measures of these constructs are underdeveloped and imprecise. Furthermore, few studies have collected data at the individual, home and neighborhood levels. Most of the available studies are cross- sectional and are therefore limited in their ability to provide information about causal influences. The proposed research will analyze and augment existing data collected as part of a household-level community intervention for weight gain prevention. The primary aim is to develop measures of the neighborhood and home food environment, and to examine the metric properties of these measures in detail. The secondary aim is to develop a series of multi-level models to better understand the influences of the home food environment, household demographics, and neighborhood retail food availability on individual food choices and change in body weight.
The proposed research will develop measures of the home and neighborhood food environment. Associations with important individual level outcomes such as food choices and body mass index will be examined.
| French, Simone A; Mitchell, Nathan R; Hannan, Peter J (2012) Decrease in television viewing predicts lower body mass index at 1-year follow-up in adolescents, but not adults. J Nutr Educ Behav 44:415-22 |
| Welsh, Ericka M; French, Simone A; Wall, Melanie (2011) Examining the relationship between family meal frequency and individual dietary intake: does family cohesion play a role? J Nutr Educ Behav 43:229-35 |
| French, Simone A; Gerlach, Anne F; Mitchell, Nathan R et al. (2011) Household obesity prevention: Take Action--a group-randomized trial. Obesity (Silver Spring) 19:2082-8 |
