Neighborhood Environments and Diet: Evaluating the Fast Food Ban in Los Angeles

描述（由申请人提供）：邻里食物环境和肥胖之间的联系在政策辩论中占据了中心地位。由于很少有自然实验来评估，这种联系主要是从横截面数据中的相关性来估计的。该项目将评估一项自然实验，即受到国际关注的分区政策，并被称为“洛杉矶快餐禁令”。尽管有“快餐禁令”的绰号，但该政策是从2008年开始限制在洛杉矶南部开设或改造快餐店的分区规定。该政策的支持者认为，该政策将吸引杂货店和超市来改善该地区的健康食品环境。该地区约有70万居民，这将使其成为美国最大的20个城市之一。洛杉矶快餐禁令为研究评估政策干预通过食品环境的影响提供了一个自然的实验。类似的分区法规经常被提倡作为对抗肥胖或至少改善饮食的方法（例如，医学研究所的一份报告）。然而，没有评估洛杉矶的规定对干预或控制地区的食品销售点、饮食或肥胖率的影响。这个提议的项目也将使我们能够在一个更有力的研究设计中重新考虑当地食物环境与饮食和肥胖之间的联系。我们的具体目标是：-利用洛杉矶县公共卫生部的许可证数据，研究受监管地区和洛杉矶未受影响地区不同类型的食品商店组成的变化，包括快餐店、全方位服务餐馆、便利店、杂货店和超市。-研究该条例是否导致饮食摄入量的变化，包括快餐、油炸土豆、含糖饮料、蔬菜的消费。和水果，或身体质量指数/肥胖，使用加州健康访谈调查（CHIS）收集的条例前后的重复横断面调查。-如果我们发现监管对饮食和肥胖的影响，我们还将分解这些影响在多大程度上是由于食品环境的变化（监管的主要目标）或干预领域的其他变化（例如媒体对当地饮食的关注）造成的。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The connection between neighborhood food environments and obesity occupies a central role in policy debates. With few natural experiments to evaluate, the connection has been primarily estimated from correlations in cross-sectional data. This project will evaluate a natural experiment, namely a zoning policy that received international attention and became known as the "Los Angeles Fast Food Ban". Despite its "fast food ban" nickname, the policy is a zoning regulation that from 2008 on restricted opening or remodeling a fast food restaurant in South Los Angeles. The proponents of the policy argued that this policy would attract grocery stores and supermarkets to enhance healthy food environments in that area. The area subject to the rule has about 700,000 residents, which by itself would make it one of the 20 largest cities in the US. The LA Fast Food Ban provides a natural experiment for research to evaluate the impact of policy interventions through the food environment. Similar zoning regulations are regularly advocated as approaches to combat obesity or at least improve diets (i.e., a report by the Institute of Medicine). Yet there are no evaluations of the impact of the Los Angeles regulation on food outlets, diets, or obesity rates in the intervention or control areas. This proposed project will aso allow us to reconsider reported associations of local food environments with diets and obesity in a stronger study design. Our specific aims are: - To study changes in the composition of different types of food outlets, including fast food restaurants, full service restaurants, convenience stores, grocery stores, and supermarkets in areas subject to the regulation and unaffected areas in Los Angeles, using license data from the LA County Public Health Dept. - To study whether the ordinance led to changes in dietary intake, including consumptions of fast foods, fried potatoes, sugar-sweetened beverages, vegetables, and fruits or in body mass index/ obesity using repeated cross-sectional surveys before and after the ordinance collected by the California Health Interview Survey (CHIS). - If we find effects of the regulation on diet and obesity, we will also decompose to which extent these effects are due to changes in the food environment (the primary goal of the regulation) or a consequence of other changes in the intervention area (e.g., media attention to local diets).