Associations between the built environment and obesity: an umbrella review
Lam, Thao Minh; Vaartjes, Ilonca; Grobbee, Diederick E.; Karssenberg, Derek; Lakerveld, Jeroen
(2021) International journal of health geographics, volume 20, issue 1
(Article)
Abstract
Background: In the past two decades, the built environment emerged as a conceptually important determinant of obesity. As a result, an abundance of studies aiming to link environmental characteristics to weight-related outcomes have been published, and multiple reviews have attempted to summarise these studies under different scopes and domains. We
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set out to summarise the accumulated evidence across domains by conducting a review of systematic reviews on associations between any aspect of the built environment and overweight or obesity. Methods: Seven databases were searched for eligible publications from the year 2000 onwards. We included systematic literature reviews, meta-analyses and pooled analyses of observational studies in the form of cross-sectional, case–control, longitudinal cohort, ecological, descriptive, intervention studies and natural experiments. We assessed risk of bias and summarised results structured by built environmental themes such as food environment, physical activity environment, urban–rural disparity, socioeconomic status and air pollution. Results: From 1850 initial hits, 32 systematic reviews were included, most of which reported equivocal evidence for associations. For food- and physical activity environments, associations were generally very small or absent, although some characteristics within these domains were consistently associated with weight status such as fast-food exposure, urbanisation, land use mix and urban sprawl. Risks of bias were predominantly high. Conclusions: Thus far, while most studies have not been able to confirm the assumed influence of built environments on weight, there is evidence for some obesogenic environmental characteristics. Registration: This umbrella review was registered on PROSPERO under ID CRD42019135857.
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Keywords: Built environment, Food environment, Obesity, Obesogenic environment, Overweight, Physical activity, Umbrella review, Meta-Analysis as Topic, Cross-Sectional Studies, Humans, Obesity/diagnosis, Built Environment, Systematic Reviews as Topic, Observational Studies as Topic, Environment Design, Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health, General Business,Management and Accounting, General Computer Science, Review, Journal Article
ISSN: 1476-072X
Publisher: BioMed Central
Note: Funding Information: Dr. Lakerveld reports grants from The Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development during the conduct of the study; grants from The Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development and grants from Netherlands Heart Foundation outside the submitted work. The other authors declare they have no actual or potential competing financial interests. Publisher Copyright: © 2021, The Author(s).
(Peer reviewed)