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Tennis, anyone?
Or what do you say we head down to the gym and hit the Stairmaster and the free weights?
If you live in a poor, minority neighborhood, those things might not be so easy to do, according to a new study from Carolina’s department of nutrition.
Penny Gordon-Larsen and her colleagues found that minorities and people living in disadvantaged neighborhoods have much less access to recreational facilities than do people living in more affluent neighborhoods.
The researchers knew that wealthier people are less likely to be obese, and more likely to exercise, than are minorities and people with lower incomes. They wanted to find out whether living in poor neighborhoods might have anything to do with access to public and private gyms, tennis courts, pools, parks, camps and other recreational resources. So they studied more than 20,000 teenagers to find out how these resources were distributed across neighborhoods across the United States.
The researchers expected that private gyms and fee-based facilities would be less common in less affluent areas. They were. In fact, they were even more rare than the researchers expected.
But the team was also surprised to find out that facilities we think of as being more “equitably allocated” — such as YMCAs, public parks and youth organizations — were significantly less common in less advantaged neighborhoods.
Then the researchers examined whether recreational resources had any impact on people’s behavior.
“We found that U.S. adolescents who don’t have access to neighborhood exercise and recreational facilities tend to have decreased physical activity and increased overweight,” said Gordon-Larsen. “Larger numbers of facilities had a greater impact on increasing exercise and reducing overweight.”
Team member Barry Popkin said this health disparity among different races, ethnicities, and income groups is “one of the major health dilemmas facing the nation.”
If all this seems intuitive, maybe even a little obvious, consider this: This study, Popkin said, is the first to empirically show how a major factor in our environment contributes to this difference in health.
Gordon-Larsen said more investment is needed for physical activity facilities and resources, especially in lower-income communities.
“When we look at obesity trends, particularly in children, adolescents and minority groups who are disproportionately affected, it is absolutely clear that population-level efforts to curb these trends are needed,” she said.
The team’s report appears in the February issue of the journal Pediatrics. Gordon-Larsen is assistant professor of nutrition. Popkin is professor of nutrition. Both are members of the Carolina Population Center. Other team members are recent UNC doctorate recipient Melissa Nelson and Phil Page, also of the Carolina Population Center. The department of nutrition is jointly housed in schools of public health and medicine.
Provided by Research and Economic Development.
Editor: Neil Caudle
Writer: Jason Smith