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Environmental Factor, August 2007, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences

Obesity and Built Environment Progress Reports

By Eddy Ball
October 2007

Humble, a good-natured chair with a ready smile and wry sense of humor, nevertheless ran a tight meeting. He used numbered cards to keep speakers within their time limits, and the meeting ended 20 minutes early. (Photo courtesy of Steve McCaw)

Lead-off speaker Wenjun Li enjoyed a humorous comment during the second day of the meeting. During his talk, he got a few laughs from his colleagues with the coined terms “obesocape” and “obesogenic.” (Photo courtesy of Steve McCaw)

John MacDonald, Ph.D., reported on progress with his team’s study of the “Impact of Light Rail on Physical Activity and BMI” among 800 residents living along the proposed corridor in Charlotte. (Photo courtesy of Steve McCaw)

In a time of flat budgets, Art Wendel, M.D., could offer little more than “continued interest at CDC in built-environment research” and its relationship with the agency’s Healthy Communities goal and climate change initiative. (Photo courtesy of Steve McCaw)

Planner Peter Owens of Smart Mobility, Inc., reminded his colleagues of the rural side of Obesity and the Built Environment Research with his profile of the small towns in New Hampshire and Vermont where his team is studying the environmental and family influences on adolescent overweight. (Photo courtesy of Steve McCaw)

The Division of Extramural Research and Training (DERT) hosted a meeting on September 5 and 6 for investigators funded through the Obesity and Built Environments program. The researchers gathered at the Sheraton Imperial Hotel in Research Triangle Park to present progress reports on their grants and share their successes and challenges with their colleagues. The series of presentations was chaired by Mike Humble, Ph.D., health scientist administrator in the DERT Cellular, Organ and Systems Pathobiology Branch.

The group included epidemiologists, public health professionals, behavioral and social scientists, architects and planners engaged in innovative interdisciplinary research into ways to impact the obesity epidemic through understanding and modifying environmental influences. The program is funded by NIEHS in conjunction with three other NIH institutes and centers and two centers within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The program, which began project funding in September 2005, supports seven four-to-five-year R01 projects to provide insights into treatment mechanisms or to develop models for prevention of obesity and related health problems. It also funds seven two-year R21 grants supporting the development and validation of built-environment measures and methods of data collection.

The grantees are working in cities, suburbs, college and corporate campuses, and rural areas across America to uncover the physical and psychological factors that encourage physical activity and discourage unhealthy eating habits. These factors range from the potential impact of Charlotte’s light rail system on physical activity (PA) and body mass index (BMI) of residents to the effects of housing density and distance from homes to consolidated schools in 29 rural communities in New Hampshire and Vermont on adolescent overweight.

Unlike much of the bench science supported by intra- and extramural NIEHS funding, most of the Obesity and Built Environment grantees rely on measuring instruments that investigators have had to develop themselves or adapt from other contexts. Several of the projects have needed to refine city planning and administration data bases, census figures and socioeconomic data, business directories and public works mapping to characterize neighborhoods. In a study of PA, nutrition and environment in the neighboring border cities of El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, investigators field tested a belt-mounted monitoring system that combined Global Positioning System data logging receivers and digital cameras with triaxial accelerometers to supplement seven-day diet diaries kept by study participants.

In a project studying childcare center preschool play areas by researchers in North Carolina State University’s College of Design, a landscape architect and his team are relating engineering and aesthetic criteria, such as slope, shade, appearance and ground surface to levels of PA. The Lean and Green in Motown Project in Detroit is assessing a matrix of methods, including spatial indicators, typologies, resident perceptions, BMI and obesity-related biomarkers, for assessing the neighborhood environments and their impact on health.

While the R21 projects are research-enabling efforts to develop and validate measurements, factors and outcomes, the R01 projects typically see their translational component in terms of education, behavioral modification, publications and policy making.

To that end, several projects have formed working alliances with government officials, non-profit organizations and community organizers to impact policy. The University of Massachusetts project, for example, has submitted its obesity and neighborhood characteristics data — what researcher Wenjun Li, Ph.D., has dubbed an “Obesogenic Map” of the state — to Department of Public Health policy makers. Researchers with the University of Illinois at Chicago (see text box) have worked with the Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities and the Chicago Board of Aldermen to improve sidewalk access through public works projects and developed incentives for businesses that are making an effort to improve accessibility.

Jennifer Rowland reported on a novel translational application of built-environment research as she showed slides of public works improvements to help mobility disabled people in Chicago expand their food shopping opportunities. (Photo courtesy of Steve McCaw)

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