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- Title
The influence of geographic life environments on cardiometabolic risk factors: a systematic review, a methodological assessment and a research agenda.
- Authors
Leal, C; Chaix, B
- Abstract
Recent environmental changes play a role in the dramatic increase in the prevalence of cardiometabolic risk factors (CMRFs) such as obesity, hypertension, type 2 diabetes, dyslipidemias and the metabolic syndrome in industrialized countries. Therefore, identifying environmental characteristics that are associated with risk factors is critical to develop more effective public health interventions. We conducted a systematic review of the literature investigating relationships between characteristics of geographic life environments and CMRFs (131 articles). Most studies were published after 2006, relied on cross-sectional designs, and examined whether sociodemographic and physical environmental characteristics, and more recently service environment characteristics, were associated with obesity or, to a lesser extent, hypertension. Only 14 longitudinal studies were retrieved; diabetes, dyslipidemias and the metabolic syndrome were rarely analysed; and aspects of social interactions in the neighbourhood were critically underinvestigated. Environmental characteristics that were consistently associated with either obesity or hypertension include low area socioeconomic position; low urbanization degree; low street intersection, service availability and residential density; high noise pollution; low accessibility to supermarkets and high density of convenience stores; and low social cohesion. Intermediate mechanisms between environmental characteristics and CMRFs have received little attention. We propose a research agenda based on the assessment of underinvestigated areas of research and methodological limitations of current literature.
- Publication
Obesity reviews : an official journal of the International Association for the Study of Obesity, 2011, Vol 12, Issue 3, p217
- ISSN
1467-789X
- Publication type
Journal Article
- DOI
10.1111/j.1467-789X.2010.00726.x