Studying Child Overweight Epidemic Natural Experiments

研究儿童超重流行病的自然实验

• 批准号: 7129483
• 负责人: Robert Sandy
• 金额: $ 22.15万
• 依托单位: INDIANA UNIV-PURDUE UNIV AT INDIANAPOLIS
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2006
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2006-08-15 至 2008-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/7129483
• 关键词: adolescence (12-20); behavioral /social science research tag; body composition; body physical activity; body weight; child psychology; clinical research; developmental psychology; diet; environmental health; health surveys; human data; human ecology; human subject; lifestyle; medical records; middle childhood (6-11); obesity; parent offspring interaction; preschool child (1-5); smoking; social psychology; socioenvironment

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Project Summary: The broad aim is to improve understanding of the child overweight epidemic and begin to identify possible public policies to address the epidemic. The immediate aim is to identify the changes in a child's neighborhood environment that affect their overweight status and measure the impact of each environmental change. The true impact of an environmental factor is difficult to measure because of unobserved differences across families can affect their location choices and their use of an environmental factor. Natural experiments are a way overcoming the bias due to any unobservable cross-family differences. The changes in the immediate environment include the addition or removal of playgrounds, pools, jogging paths, athletic fields, fast food restaurants, supermarkets, and convenience stores. Changes in the immediate environment constitute a natural experiment for the children who live at the same address before and after the change. The method is to create a panel data set based on clinical information on approximately 35,000 children between 1992 and 2007 including their measured heights and weights and addresses and to connect each child to the changes in their immediate environment through a city-wide geographic information database. Impacts will be measure as functions of their network distance and of time for up to six years after an environmental change. A second phase of the project is to survey 2,000 parent-child pairs that live near the environmental changes that had the highest estimated impact on child overweight in the initial data and obtain behavioral information on the before-and-after use of the environmental factors. The estimation strategy is to use fixed effects and difference-in-difference estimators to isolate the impact of environmental changes while obtaining more precise estimates of the social factors that affect child overweight including the family's medical insurance status, race, education, and composition. Relevance: The US child overweight epidemic and its long-term health consequences are well documented. The location of this study, Indianapolis, is among the worst in the nation in terms of the percentage of overweight children. This project will measure the impact of changes in the immediate neighborhood environment on children's diets and exercise and thus begin to identify possible public policies to address the epidemic.

描述（由申请人提供）： 项目摘要：总体目标是提高对儿童超重流行病的认识，并开始确定可能的公共政策来应对这一流行病。直接目标是确定儿童周围环境中影响其超重状况的变化，并衡量每个环境变化的影响。环境因素的真正影响很难衡量，因为家庭之间未观察到的差异可能会影响他们的位置选择和对环境因素的使用。自然实验是克服由于任何不可观察的跨家庭差异而产生的偏见的一种方法。周围环境的变化包括增加或拆除游乐场、游泳池、慢跑道、运动场、快餐店、超市和便利店。周围环境的变化对于变化前后居住在同一地址的孩子来说是一次自然的实验。该方法是根据 1992 年至 2007 年间约 35,000 名儿童的临床信息（包括他们测量的身高、体重和地址）创建面板数据集，并通过全市地理信息数据库将每个儿童与其周围环境的变化联系起来。影响将根据网络距离和环境变化后长达六年的时间来衡量。该项目的第二阶段是对居住在初始数据中对儿童超重影响最大的环境变化附近的2000对亲子进行调查，获取使用环境因素前后的行为信息。估计策略是利用固定效应和双重差分估计量来隔离环境变化的影响，同时获得对影响儿童超重的社会因素（包括家庭医疗保险状况、种族、教育和构成）的更精确估计。相关性：美国儿童超重流行及其长期健康后果已有充分记录。这项研究的地点印第安纳波利斯是全国超重儿童比例最差的地区之一。该项目将衡量邻近环境的变化对儿童饮食和运动的影响，从而开始确定应对这一流行病的可能的公共政策。