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Do fast food restaurants surrounding schools affect childhood obesity?

In this study, we estimate the effect of fast food environment surrounding schools on childhood body mass index (BMI). We use two methods that arrive at a similar conclusion, but with different implications. Using school distance from the nearest federal highway to instrument for restaurant location...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Asirvatham, Jebaraj, Thomsen, Michael R., Nayga, Rodolfo M., Goudie, Anthony
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6584617/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30825861
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ehb.2019.01.011
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author Asirvatham, Jebaraj
Thomsen, Michael R.
Nayga, Rodolfo M.
Goudie, Anthony
author_facet Asirvatham, Jebaraj
Thomsen, Michael R.
Nayga, Rodolfo M.
Goudie, Anthony
author_sort Asirvatham, Jebaraj
collection PubMed
description In this study, we estimate the effect of fast food environment surrounding schools on childhood body mass index (BMI). We use two methods that arrive at a similar conclusion, but with different implications. Using school distance from the nearest federal highway to instrument for restaurant location, we find the surrounding restaurants to only marginally affect a student’s BMI measure. The effect size also decreases with increasing radial distances from school, 0.016 standard deviations at one-third of a mile and 0.0032 standard deviations at a mile radial distance. This indicates the decreasing influence of restaurants on a child’s BMI as its distance from school increases. On a subset of students who were exogenously assigned to different school food environment, we find no effect of the fast food restaurants. An important contextual aspect is that nearly all schools in this sample observed closed campus policy, which does not allow students to leave campus during lunch hours.
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spelling pubmed-65846172019-06-20 Do fast food restaurants surrounding schools affect childhood obesity? Asirvatham, Jebaraj Thomsen, Michael R. Nayga, Rodolfo M. Goudie, Anthony Econ Hum Biol Article In this study, we estimate the effect of fast food environment surrounding schools on childhood body mass index (BMI). We use two methods that arrive at a similar conclusion, but with different implications. Using school distance from the nearest federal highway to instrument for restaurant location, we find the surrounding restaurants to only marginally affect a student’s BMI measure. The effect size also decreases with increasing radial distances from school, 0.016 standard deviations at one-third of a mile and 0.0032 standard deviations at a mile radial distance. This indicates the decreasing influence of restaurants on a child’s BMI as its distance from school increases. On a subset of students who were exogenously assigned to different school food environment, we find no effect of the fast food restaurants. An important contextual aspect is that nearly all schools in this sample observed closed campus policy, which does not allow students to leave campus during lunch hours. 2019-02-16 2019-05 /pmc/articles/PMC6584617/ /pubmed/30825861 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ehb.2019.01.011 Text en This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Asirvatham, Jebaraj
Thomsen, Michael R.
Nayga, Rodolfo M.
Goudie, Anthony
Do fast food restaurants surrounding schools affect childhood obesity?
title Do fast food restaurants surrounding schools affect childhood obesity?
title_full Do fast food restaurants surrounding schools affect childhood obesity?
title_fullStr Do fast food restaurants surrounding schools affect childhood obesity?
title_full_unstemmed Do fast food restaurants surrounding schools affect childhood obesity?
title_short Do fast food restaurants surrounding schools affect childhood obesity?
title_sort do fast food restaurants surrounding schools affect childhood obesity?
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6584617/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30825861
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ehb.2019.01.011
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