Physical Environment, Dynamics, Inequality and Obesity

This study focuses on how numerous community characteristics interact with race/ethnicity and other key socio-economic factors to affect physical activity, inactivity, and overweight status in American youths as they transition from adolescence to adulthood. Our research is based on the premise that race/ethnicity is an underlying, individual, fixed characteristic ultimately related to health outcomes because individuals of different race/ethnicity (1) tend to have different social/economic resources, live in different contexts, and (2) adopt different behaviors; the effects of these factors may also differ by race/ethnicity. We intend to explore this premise using data from the three waves (1995, 1996, 2001) of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). Add Health data are well suited for this research because of the longitudinal, population-based surveys that include large samples of non-Hispanic blacks, Hispanics, and Asians, and provide in-depth SES and contextual data.