Do neighbourhood environments contribute to ethnic differences in obesity, physical activity and diets?

政府在学校和社区的饮食和体育活动方面采取了一系列举措，并通过立法促进食品分类制度，使人们更容易选择健康食品，这反映出遏制肥胖的上升是一项优先政策。肥胖的种族差异是众所周知的，但其原因却知之甚少。这项研究试图了解人们的生活环境是否起作用，是否会影响体育锻炼、饮食模式和体型。少数民族往往生活在贫穷的城市地区，这些地区的体育活动设施可能不太好，或者可能觉得太不安全而不能进行体育锻炼。众所周知，快餐店在贫困地区更为常见。生活在富裕地区的少数民族（主要是白人）可能比生活在贫困地区的少数民族有更好的健康食品和更多的锻炼。这些问题与旨在帮助不同背景的人从事健康生活方式和预防肥胖的政策有关。例如，如果难以获得娱乐设施和南亚人在该地区的高度集中与南亚妇女的体育活动较少有关，那么重要的是要考虑以文化上适当的方式提供这些设施。我们将使用全国性的调查，这些调查包含少数民族个体的体育活动、饮食和体型数据。我们还将使用一系列数据来描述人们居住的地区的背景，例如居住在一个地区的少数民族人口的规模，该地区的贫困程度，该地区的犯罪率，快餐店和健身房的数量以及这些地方离人们居住的地方有多远。这些数据将使我们能够研究少数民族群体的肥胖、体育活动和饮食模式在多大程度上受到他们生活的地方的影响。

Halting the rise in obesity is a policy priority as reflected in a range of government initiatives on diet and physical activity in schools and the community, and on legislation to promote a food classification system to make choosing healthy food easy. Ethnic differences in obesity are well known but the cause is poorly understood. This study seeks to understand if the context of where people live plays a role, whether it affects physical exercise and dietary patterns and their body size. Ethnic minorities tend to live in poor urban areas and these areas might be less well served with facilities for physical activity or might be felt to too unsafe to take up physical exercise. Fast food outlets are known to be more common in deprived areas. Ethnic minorities living in (predominantly White) affluent areas may have better access healthy foods and take more exercise than those living in poor areas. These issues have relevance to policies that aim to help people from different backgrounds to engage in healthy lifestyles and to prevent obesity. For example, if both poor access to recreational facilities and high concentration of South Asians in areas were associated with low physical activity in South Asian women, it would be important to consider culturally appropriate ways of providing these facilities. We will use national surveys that hold data about physical activity, diet, body size on individuals from ethnic minority groups. We will also use a range of data that describe the context of the areas people live in such as the size of ethnic minority populations living in an area, the poverty level of areas, the crime rates in areas, and the number of fast food outlets and gyms and how far these are from where people live. These data will allow us to examine the extent to which the obesity, physical activity and dietary patterns in ethnic minority groups are shaped by the places they live.