Annotated Bibliography of “Socio-Demographic and Built Environment Influences on the Odds of Being Overweight or Obese: The Atlanta Experience.”

Bodea, Tudor D. et al. “Socio-Demographic and Built Environment Influences on the Odds of Being Overweight or Obese: The Atlanta Experience.” Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice 43.4 (2009): 430–444. CrossRef. Web. (30)

This paper discusses how the built environment and socio-demographics affects people’s weight using data from the Atlanta SMARTRAQ travel survey. In order to be able to separate people into different categories, the authors used the BMI index. The authors also used the Multinomial Logit Model  because of the multitude of variables. The MNL model was used in this study as a way to explain the relationships that exist with weight, socio-demographics and the built environment.

The study discovered the following: Males, people with lesser educations, African Americans, households with lower incomes and the presence of children are more prone to be overweight than their equivalent counterparts. The study also discovered that certain aspects of the built environment, such as street connectivity and net residential density had an effect on obesity. Areas with high street connectivity and net residential density lowered the probability of being overweight whereas, areas with low street connectivity and net residential density increased the probability of becoming overweight.

This source was very informative about how the built environment affects health, which I never really thought about before. This paper is relevant to the current time period and the authors are not biased when presenting their views.