American journal of preventive medicine
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Comparative Study
Measuring food availability and access in African-American communities: implications for intervention and policy.
Obesity is a major public health concern in the U. S. As compared to whites, minority populations are disproportionately at risk, with the highest prevalence rates of overweight and obesity occurring among African American women. ⋯ A major challenge has been the need for reliable and valid measures to assess aspects of the neighborhood food environment that encourage or inhibit healthful eating behaviors and weight management. Investigators have made considerable gains in the development of tools and approaches to measure neighborhood food environments overall, but few studies focus on the specific challenges and issues associated with characterizing neighborhood food environments in communities of color. This paper highlights important considerations for measuring food environments in African-American neighborhoods and their implications for developing programmatic and policy solutions to reduce racial disparities in overweight.
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The capacity of public parks and recreation environments to promote physical activity for low-income communities of color is receiving increased attention from researchers and policymakers. As a result, several systems to measure park and recreation environments have been recently developed. Developing measures is important because they are critical to establishing key correlates and determinants that drive physical activity and inform intervention strategies. ⋯ One strategy for incorporating the perceptions is community-based participatory research. The rapid development of high-quality tools for measuring parks and recreation environments is encouraging. However, existing measures should be tested and refined in varying social-ecologic conditions, and new tools should be developed specifically for nuances associated with low-income minority communities.