The Association Between Physical Inactivity and Obesity is Modified by Five Domains of Environmental Quality in U.S. Adults: A Cross-Sectional Study

Authors

Christine L. Gray, University of North Carolina at Chapel HillFollow
Lynne C. Messer, Portland State UniversityFollow
Kristen M. Rappazzo, University of North Carolina at Chapel HillFollow
Jyotsna S. Jagai, University of Illinois at ChicagoFollow
Shannon C. Grabich, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Danelle T. Lobdell, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

Sponsor

This work was supported by the Office of Research and Development at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (contracts EP12D000264, EP09D000003 and EP17D000079 to LCM, contract EP17D000063 to JSJ, and appointment of CLG to the Research Participation Program, administered through the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education through an interagency agreement between the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; epa.gov).

Published In

PLoS ONE

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

8-30-2018

Subjects

Obesity -- Environmental aspects, Obesity -- Effect of environmental quality on, Sedentary behavior

Abstract

Physical inactivity is a primary contributor to the obesity epidemic, but may be promoted or hindered by environmental factors. To examine how cumulative environmental quality may modify the inactivity-obesity relationship, we conducted a cross-sectional study by linking county-level Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System data with the Environmental Quality Index (EQI), a composite measure of five environmental domains (air, water, land, built, sociodemographic) across all U.S. counties. We estimated the county-level association (N = 3,137 counties) between 2009 age-adjusted leisure-time physical inactivity (LTPIA) and 2010 age-adjusted obesity from BRFSS across EQI tertiles using multi-level linear regression, with a random intercept for state, adjusted for percent minority and rural-urban status. We modelled overall and sex-specific estimates, reporting prevalence differences (PD) and 95% confidence intervals (CI). In the overall population, the PD increased from best (PD = 0.341 (95% CI: 0.287, 0.396)) to worst (PD = 0.645 (95% CI: 0.599, 0.690)) EQI tertile. We observed similar trends in males from best (PD = 0.244 (95% CI: 0.194, 0.294)) to worst (PD = 0.601 (95% CI: 0.556, 0.647)) quality environments, and in females from best (PD = 0.446 (95% CI: 0.385, 0.507)) to worst (PD = 0.655 (95% CI: 0.607, 0.703)). We found that poor environmental quality exacerbates the LTPIA-obesity relationship. Efforts to improve obesity through LTPIA may benefit from considering this relationship.

Description

This is an open access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication.

Article is available online https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0203301

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0203301

Persistent Identifier

https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/26980

Citation Details

Gray CL, Messer LC, Rappazzo KM, Jagai JS, Grabich SC, Lobdell DT (2018) The association between physical inactivity and obesity is modified by five domains of environmental quality in U.S. adults: A cross-sectional study. PLoS ONE 13(8): e0203301.