Looking to the past: Investigating 10-year place histories as a determinant of home food environments in the Healthy Communities Study.

Emerging research suggests there is a need to consider the importance of place histories in studying neighborhood effects. Guided by a life course of place framework, the objective of this study is to investigate the relationship between two place history exposures and three contemporary home food environment outcomes. Exposures included 10-year neighborhood socioeconomic status (SES) histories and multi-year nutrition community programming and policy (CPP) histories.

Neighborhood Social and Physical Environments and Sedentary Behaviors: Importance of Early Childhood in Shaping Health Behaviors.

This study aims to investigate the persistence of sedentary behaviors from early childhood to adolescence and the longitudinal association between neighborhood social and physical environments and childhood sedentary behaviors. Using the Future of Families & Child Wellbeing Study (N = 2716), we conducted a cross-lagged path analysis to examine the longitudinal association between neighborhood social and physical environments (neighborhood socioeconomic status, observed physical disorder, and crime rates) and sedentary behaviors at subsequent measurement points, after controlling for demographic factors and family socioeconomic status. We observed the continuity of sedentary behaviors in early childhood, extending throughout adolescence.

Neighborhood environments underpin screen time intervention success in children: Evidence from a study of greenspace and community programming across 130 US communities.

The goal of this study was to understand how neighborhood greenspace access may support or hinder the effectiveness of community programs and policies (CPPs) aimed at reducing racial and ethnic inequities in screen time among 4598 US children. We found higher CPP intensity was significantly associated with fewer screen time behaviors in high greenspace neighborhoods, but not neighborhoods with low or moderate greenspace. Moreover, there were significant differences in greenspace access by neighborhood-level race and ethnicity.

Intake of Snacks and Sweets in a National Study of Built and Social Environments: the REasons for Geographic And Racial Differences in Stroke Study.

Background: Few national studies across the United States' rural-urban continuum examine neighborhood effects on snacks and sweets intake among adults.

Objectives: This study examines associations of urbanicity/rurality-tailored measures of food store availability and neighborhood socioeconomic status (NSES) with the intake of snacks and sweets in a national sample of middle and older age adults.

Methods: This cross-sectional study used food frequency questionnaire data collected in the REasons for Geographic And Racial Differences in Stroke study (N = 21,204).

Food Environments and Cardiovascular Disease: Evidence From the Health and Retirement Study.

Introduction: Residential food environments are one of the important determinants of cardiovascular health. However, past literature has been limited by short-term follow-ups, time-invariant environmental measurements at baseline, and/or not investigating both healthy and unhealthy aspects of the food environment. This study examines the effects of time-varying healthy and unhealthy food environments on incident cardiovascular disease (CVD) over 10 years, extracting data from the Health and Retirement Study (2006-2016; N=10,413).