Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Arena, Ross
• Pronk, Nicolaas P.
• Woodard, Colin

Titel

Novel Approaches to Addressing the US Physical Inactivity and Obesity Pandemics: An Opportunity for Religious Organizations

Ist Teil von

• The American journal of medicine, 2024-03, Vol.137 (3), p.240-248

Ort / Verlag

United States: Elsevier Inc

Erscheinungsjahr

2024

Quelle

MEDLINE

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Physical inactivity and obesity crises persist in the United States despite substantial mitigation efforts. The primary goal of this analysis is to determine whether the geographic concentration of religious institutions overlaps with geographic patterns for physical inactivity and obesity prevalence. We obtained 2021 county-level, age-adjusted physical inactivity (“no leisure time physical activity”) and obesity prevalence from the 2023 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention PLACES database. Data on number of congregations per 100,000 individuals and adherents as a percentage of the population were obtained from the 2020 US Religion Census. The American Nations regional cultures model was obtained from the Nationhood Lab. On a national level, all correlations were statistically significant between health factors and religious infrastructure—higher physical inactivity and obesity were related to more congregations per 100,000 population on a county level. The strength of correlations between congregations per 100,000 county population and both physical inactivity and obesity prevalence was greatest in the American Nations model's Deep South and Tidewater regions. Approaches to addressing the pandemics of unhealthy lifestyle-related health factors of physical inactivity and obesity in the United States have, in large part, been unsuccessful. Church-based healthy lifestyle programs, particularly in areas where a high concentration of congregations align with high physical inactivity and obesity, may offer a novel and effective approach to addressing this issue.