TY - JOUR
T1 - Development of a neighborhood obesogenic built environment characteristics index for the Netherlands
AU - Lam, Thao Minh
AU - Wagtendonk, Alfred J
AU - den Braver, Nicolette R
AU - Karssenberg, Derek
AU - Vaartjes, Ilonca
AU - Timmermans, Erik J
AU - Beulens, Joline W J
AU - Lakerveld, Jeroen
N1 - Funding Information: The Geoscience and hEalth Cohort COnsortium (GECCO) was financially supported by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), the Netherlands Organization for Health Research and Development (ZonMw), and Amsterdam University Medical Centers. Funding Information: Thao Minh Lam, Nicolette R. den Braver, and Erik J. Timmermans received funding from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) under the Exposome‐NL consortium. Jeroen Lakerveld and Alfred J. Wagtendonk received funding from Netherlands Organization for Health Research and Development (ZonMw) to collect and process environmental data used in this study. The other authors declared no conflict of interest. Publisher Copyright: © 2022 The Authors. Obesity published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of The Obesity Society.
PY - 2023/1/1
Y1 - 2023/1/1
N2 - Objective: Environmental factors that drive obesity are often studied individually, whereas obesogenic environments are likely to consist of multiple factors from food and physical activity (PA) environments. This study aimed to compose and describe a comprehensive, theory-based, expert-informed index to quantify obesogenicity for all neighborhoods in the Netherlands. Methods: The Obesogenic Built Environment CharacterisTics (OBCT) index consists of 17 components. The index was calculated as an average of componential scores across both food and PA environments and was scaled from 0 to 100. The index was visualized and summarized with sensitivity analysis for weighting methods. Results: The OBCT index for all 12,821 neighborhoods was right-skewed, with a median of 44.6 (IQR = 10.1). Obesogenicity was lower in more urbanized neighborhoods except for the extremely urbanized neighborhoods (>2500 addresses/km 2), where obesogenicity was highest. The overall OBCT index score was moderately correlated with the food environment (Spearman ρ = 0.55, p <0.05) and with the PA environment (ρ = 0.38, p <0.05). Hierarchical weighting increased index correlations with the PA environment but decreased correlations with the food environment. Conclusions: The novel OBCT index and its comprehensive environmental scores are potentially useful tools to quantify obesogenicity of neighborhoods.
AB - Objective: Environmental factors that drive obesity are often studied individually, whereas obesogenic environments are likely to consist of multiple factors from food and physical activity (PA) environments. This study aimed to compose and describe a comprehensive, theory-based, expert-informed index to quantify obesogenicity for all neighborhoods in the Netherlands. Methods: The Obesogenic Built Environment CharacterisTics (OBCT) index consists of 17 components. The index was calculated as an average of componential scores across both food and PA environments and was scaled from 0 to 100. The index was visualized and summarized with sensitivity analysis for weighting methods. Results: The OBCT index for all 12,821 neighborhoods was right-skewed, with a median of 44.6 (IQR = 10.1). Obesogenicity was lower in more urbanized neighborhoods except for the extremely urbanized neighborhoods (>2500 addresses/km 2), where obesogenicity was highest. The overall OBCT index score was moderately correlated with the food environment (Spearman ρ = 0.55, p <0.05) and with the PA environment (ρ = 0.38, p <0.05). Hierarchical weighting increased index correlations with the PA environment but decreased correlations with the food environment. Conclusions: The novel OBCT index and its comprehensive environmental scores are potentially useful tools to quantify obesogenicity of neighborhoods.
KW - Built Environment
KW - Environment Design
KW - Exercise
KW - Humans
KW - Netherlands/epidemiology
KW - Obesity/epidemiology
KW - Residence Characteristics
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85144334843&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - https://doi.org/10.1002/oby.23610
DO - https://doi.org/10.1002/oby.23610
M3 - Article
C2 - 36541154
SN - 1930-7381
VL - 31
SP - 214
EP - 224
JO - Obesity
JF - Obesity
IS - 1
ER -