When Students Patronize Fast-Food Restaurants near School: The Effects of Identification with the Student Community, Social Activity Spaces and Social Liability Interventions.

US schools have fast-food restaurants nearby, encouraging student patronage, unhealthy consumption, and weight gain. Geographers have developed an activity space framework which suggests this nearby location effect will be moderated by whether people perceive the location as their activity space. Therefore, we study whether students perceive a fast-food restaurant near school as their activity space, and whether social marketing messages can change that perception. We conducted six studies: a secondary data analysis with 5986 students, a field experiment with 188 students, and four lab experiments with 188, 251, 178, and 379 students. We find that students who strongly identify with their student community patronize a fast-food restaurant near school (vs. farther away) because they view it as their activity space, while students who weakly identify do not. For example, in our field experiment, 44% vs. 7% of students who strongly identified with the student community patronized the near versus farther restaurant, while only 28% versus 19% of students who weakly identified patronized the near and farther restaurants comparably. We also find that to deter the strong identifiers, messages should convey that patronage is a social liability, e.g., portray student activism against fast food. We show that standard health messages do not change perceptions of restaurants as social activity spaces. Thus, to combat the problem of fast-food restaurants near schools causing unhealthy consumption, policy and educational interventions should focus on students who strongly identify with their student community and find ways to weaken their perceptions that fast-food restaurants near schools are their activity spaces.

Fifty years of fat: news coverage of trends that predate obesity prevalence.

BACKGROUND: Obesity prevalence has risen in fifty years. While people generally expect media mentions of health risks like obesity prevalence to follow health risk trends, food consumption trends may precede obesity prevalence trends. Therefore, this research investigates whether media mentions of food predate obesity prevalence. METHODS: Fifty years of non-advertising articles in the New York Times (and 17 years for the London Times) are coded for the mention of less healthy (5 salty and 5 sweet snacks) and healthy (5 fruits and 5 vegetables) food items by year and then associated with annual obesity prevalence in subsequent years. Time-series generalized linear models test whether food-related mentions predate or postdate obesity prevalence in each country. RESULTS: United States obesity prevalence is positively associated with New York Times mentions of sweet snacks (b = 55.2, CI = 42.4 to 68.1, p = .000) and negatively associated with mentions of fruits (b = -71.28, CI -91.5 to -51.1, p = .000) and vegetables (b = -13.6, CI = -17.5 to -9.6, p = .000). Similar results are found for the United Kingdom and The London Times. Importantly, the "obesity followed mentions" models are stronger than the "obesity preceded mentions" models. CONCLUSIONS: It may be possible to estimate a nation's future obesity prevalence (e.g., three years from now) based on how frequently national media mention sweet snacks (positively related) and vegetables or fruits (negatively related) today. This may provide public health officials and epidemiologists with new tools to more quickly assess the effectiveness of current obesity interventions based on what is mentioned in the media today.

How gay-straight alliance groups mitigate the relationship between gay-bias victimization and adolescent suicide attempts.

OBJECTIVE: We examined the relationships between victimization from being bullied, suicide, hopelessness, and the presence of a Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) on a school campus. METHOD: We analyzed data from the California Healthy Kids Survey from 2005 to 2007 using hierarchical modeling. RESULTS: We found that gay-bias (versus non-gay-bias) victimization is meaningfully connected with the inwardly destructive behavior of attempted suicide among adolescents. We also found that hopelessness helps explain associations between gay-bias victimization and suicide attempts and that the presence of a GSA club on a school's campus attenuates significant connections between gay-bias victimization and suicide attempts by reducing hopelessness. CONCLUSION: Gay-bias victims are more likely than other victims to attempt suicide while also feeling more hopeless. The presence of a GSA on campus may help to reduce the attempted suicide and hopelessness associated with gay-bias victimization.

Proximity of fast-food restaurants to schools and adolescent obesity.

OBJECTIVES: We examined the relationship between fast-food restaurants near schools and obesity among middle and high school students in California. METHODS: We used geocoded data (obtained from the 2002-2005 California Healthy Kids Survey) on over 500,000 youths and multivariate regression models to estimate associations between adolescent obesity and proximity of fast-food restaurants to schools. RESULTS: We found that students with fast-food restaurants near (within one half mile of) their schools (1) consumed fewer servings of fruits and vegetables, (2) consumed more servings of soda, and (3) were more likely to be overweight (odds ratio [OR] = 1.06; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.02, 1.10) or obese (OR = 1.07; 95% CI = 1.02, 1.12) than were youths whose schools were not near fast-food restaurants, after we controlled for student- and school-level characteristics. The result was unique to eating at fast-food restaurants (compared with other nearby establishments) and was not observed for another risky behavior (smoking). CONCLUSIONS: Exposure to poor-quality food environments has important effects on adolescent eating patterns and overweight. Policy interventions limiting the proximity of fast-food restaurants to schools could help reduce adolescent obesity.