Where You Live Might Influence Your Weight

“We know that the living environment, such as low-income regions, lack access to proper grocery stores. Instead, there are only convenience stores and gas stations. Impoverished environments usually don’t have amenities that promote healthy living and healthy eating,” said Nwabunie Nwana, PhD, MPH, and author of study. “We wanted to utilize variables, look at the ADI and BMI matrix, and see if there was a trend where patients who live in poorer neighborhoods were more likely to be morbidly obese. We wanted to see what the association is between ADI and socioeconomic classes.”

The study included 751,174 adult patients with an average age of 52. The study found the strongest association between ADI and morbid obesity was greater among Hispanic patients, followed by white and black patients. Females were more likely to be morbidly obese, and patients between 18-39 and 40-64 were more strongly associated with ADI and morbid obesity.

The data also confirmed there was a higher prevalence of patients with a higher BMI as ADI increased in the total population, and across age, sex and race/ethnicity subgroups. The authors also noted that while the use of ADI in health outcomes is becoming more common, the understanding of how neighborhood deprivation relates to body weight is still elusive in the literature. This study clearly describes the characteristics and prevalence of all BMI categories in relation to ADI and focuses on an understudied population — patients with morbid obesity. The evidence obtained in this study shows a relationship between BMI and ADI.

“The findings are very informative for food policy makers to begin the discourse on how we can tailor resources to enrich these underserved neighborhoods, such as adding amenities and infrastructure that will allow these patients to adopt a healthier lifestyle that would inherently benefit their BMI status,” said Nwana.

Nwana sees this information being incorporated into a two-fold intervention involving both physicians and policymakers.

“Clinically, we understand that this social determinant is affecting our patients’ health and how to connect them to community resources or even social workers in the hospital system to help them access healthier foods,” she said. “But beyond that intervention, from a policy standpoint, something needs to be done in the communities to really improve the living conditions. Through this twofold intervention, I believe we would really see positive results.”