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

遏制肥胖的上升是一项政策重点，这体现在政府在学校和社区的饮食和体育活动方面的一系列举措，以及促进食品分类系统的立法，以使选择健康食品变得容易。肥胖的种族差异是众所周知的，但其原因却鲜为人知。这项研究试图了解人们居住的环境是否起到了作用，是否影响了体育锻炼和饮食模式以及他们的体型。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，或者可能被认为太不安全，不适合进行体育锻炼。众所周知，快餐店在贫困地区更常见。生活在富裕地区(主要是白人)的少数民族可能比生活在贫困地区的少数民族更容易获得健康食品，并进行更多的锻炼。这些问题与旨在帮助来自不同背景的人从事健康生活方式和预防肥胖的政策相关。例如，如果很难获得娱乐设施和南亚人高度集中在一些地区与南亚妇女的体力活动少有关，那么重要的是考虑提供这些设施的文化上适当的方式。我们将使用全国性的调查，这些调查保存着少数民族个人的体力活动、饮食和体型数据。我们还将使用一系列数据来描述人们生活的地区的背景，例如一个地区的少数民族人口规模、地区的贫困程度、地区的犯罪率、快餐店和健身房的数量以及这些餐厅和健身房离人们居住的地方有多远。这些数据将使我们能够检查少数民族群体的肥胖、体力活动和饮食模式在多大程度上受到他们居住的地方的影响。

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.