Neighborhood Impact on Kids (NIK)
Activity, eating, and other behaviors greatly impact children's and adult's health, but more information is needed about the factors that affect these behaviors. Few studies have examined neighborhood environmental correlates and its impact on children's weight status, physical activity, sedentary behavior, and dietary quality in youth of any age.
Dr. Saelens is the primary investigator of the National Institutes of Health funded Neighborhood Impacts on Kids (NIK) Study. NIK examines the relation between children's health, physical activity, and diet, and the environments in which they live. Environmental factors specifically investigated are population density, land use mix, street connectivity, public recreation space, and neighborhood nutrition environment quality.
Healthy children ages 6-10 years old are recruited from neighborhoods in Cincinnati and San Diego. Neighborhoods are evaluated and selected to be different in their environments. Children's health, physical activity, and diet will be collected at baseline and at a 2-year follow-up.
This project is innovative in its focus on children and neighborhood-level environmental factors, the evaluation of environmental factors as predictors of change in children's health over time, and the examination of multiple environmental factors potentially related to both children's physical activity and nutrition. It is important to understand the environmental surroundings, its impact on middle childhood weight status, and the change in health in order to design evidence-based environmental interventions for health risk prevention.
