Abstract

Doc number: 233

Abstract

Background: Understanding which physical environmental factors affect adult obesity, and how best to influence them, is important for public health and urban planning. Previous attempts to summarise the literature have not systematically assessed the methodological quality of included studies, or accounted for environmental differences between continents or the ways in which environmental characteristics were measured.

Methods: We have conducted an updated review of the scientific literature on associations of physical environmental factors with adult weight status, stratified by continent and mode of measurement, accompanied by a detailed risk-of-bias assessment. Five databases were systematically searched for studies published between 1995 and 2013.

Results: Two factors, urban sprawl and land use mix, were found consistently associated with weight status, although only in North America.

Conclusions: With the exception of urban sprawl and land use mix in the US the results of the current review confirm that the available research does not allow robust identification of ways in which that physical environment influences adult weight status, even after taking into account methodological quality.

Details

Title
Obesogenic environments: a systematic review of the association between the physical environment and adult weight status, the SPOTLIGHT project
Author
Mackenbach, Joreintje D; Rutter, Harry; Compernolle, Sofie; Glonti, Ketevan; Oppert, Jean-Michel; Charreire, Helene; De Bourdeaudhuij, Ilse; Brug, Johannes; Nijpels, Giel; Lakerveld, Jeroen
Pages
233
Publication year
2014
Publication date
2014
Publisher
BioMed Central
e-ISSN
14712458
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
1512645121
Copyright
© 2014 Mackenbach et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.