ASU Food Policy and Environment Research Group

Many factors influence children’s health behaviors and health outcomes. The Social Ecological Model (SEM) groups these factors into interactive layers, creating a framework for understanding their influence and for designing interventions to achieve positive change. The layers of influence in the SEM include individual, interpersonal, organizational, community, and policy factors (see figure). The New Jersey Child Health Study (NJCHS) was designed to examine how specific layers of the SEM, particularly food and physical activity environments in schools and communities, affect obesity outcomes in children

This study aims to examine children’s fruit, vegetable, and added sugar consumption relative to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans and the American Heart Association’s recommendations, as well as to compare children’s reported consumption with parental perception of the child’s overall diet quality. Data were drawn from 2 independent, cross sectional panels (2009–10 and 2014–15) of the New Jersey Child Health Study. The analytical sample included 2229 households located in five New Jersey cities. Daily consumption of fruit (cups), vegetables (cups), and added sugars (teaspoons) for all children (3–18 years old) were based on parent reports. Multivariate linear regression analyses estimated children’s adjusted fruit, vegetable, and added sugar consumption across parents’ perception categories (Disagree; Somewhat Agree; and Strongly Agree that their child eats healthy). Although only a small proportion of children meet recommendations, the majority of parents strongly agreed that their child ate healthy. Nonetheless, significant differences, in the expected direction, were observed in vegetable and fruit consumption (but not sugar) across parental perceptional categories for most age/sex groups. Dietary interventions tailored to parents should include specific quantity and serving-size information for fruit and vegetable recommendations, based on their child’s age/sex, and highlight sources of added sugar and their sugar content.

Little evidence exists examining if parental nativity, neighborhood disadvantage and built environment features are associated with physical activity behaviors in Latino youth. We used a representative sample of Latino youth (n = 616) living in New Jersey to examine parental nativity associations with active transport to school, active use of sidewalks, use of local neighborhood parks, and use of neighborhood physical activity facilities. We estimated prevalence ratios (PR) that accounted for the complex survey design. Latino youth with foreign-born parents were generally more active than their US-born peers, and those with parents in the US 10 years or less were more likely to engage in active transport to school (PR = 1.51, 95 % CI 1.04–2.21), after adjusting for census-based neighborhood disadvantage, self-reported neighborhood measures, and geocoded distance to school. Parental nativity status should be considered in policies or interventions designed to increase physical activity among Latino youth.