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Childhood Obesity: Environment, Behavior, and Physiology

A special issue of International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (ISSN 1660-4601). This special issue belongs to the section "Children's Health".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (24 March 2023) | Viewed by 3644

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Department of Health Sciences, California State University Northridge, Northridge, CA 91330, USA
Interests: Type 2 Diabetes risk factors in youth

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Guest Editor
Department of Integrative Physiology, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, USA
Interests: Type 2 diabetes; environmental epidemiology; human microbiome
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Recent estimates by the World Health Organization report a 4-fold increase in the prevalence of overweight and obesity in youth aged 5–19 years compared to rates in the mid-1970s. Early life overweight and obesity is a strong predictor of adult obesity, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, and cancer. Therefore, there is an urgent need to consider the complex factors that contribute to early life obesity, including behavioral, environmental, and physiological risk factors among diverse populations.

Thus, research in pediatric populations is needed at local, national, and international scales which:

  • Utilize robust measures of measuring adiposity and physiological mechanisms;
  • Quantify long-term risk of various determinants and obesity outcomes;
  • Are generalizable to higher risk populations;
  • Address synergistic effects of environment, behavior, and/or physiology on childhood obesity or related cardiometabolic conditions;
  • Compare and consolidate data to infer causal pathways relating to childhood obesity risk.

This Special Issue is open to original research, review articles, short reports, brief commentaries, and meta-analyses, related to childhood obesity and/or related cardiometabolic conditions.

Topics may include but are not limited to examination of:

  • Environmental and/or sociocultural determinants of childhood obesity;
  • Childhood obesity disparities related to sociocultural and racial/ethnic differences;
  • Pre- and/or postnatal exposures and their relationship to childhood obesity;
  • Pathophysiological mechanisms associated with childhood obesity or related cardiometabolic conditions;
  • Synergistic effects of environment, behavior, and physiology on childhood obesity or related cardiometabolic conditions

Dr. Claudia Toledo-Corral
Dr. Tanya Alderete
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2500 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • obesity
  • Metabolic Syndrome
  • children
  • adolescents
  • environmental
  • social determinants
  • health disparities

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

10 pages, 1212 KiB  
Article
Density of Fast Food Outlets around Educational Facilities in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: Geospatial Analysis
by Alaa Ashraf AlQurashi, Dian Kusuma, Hala AlJishi, Ali AlFaiz and Abdulaziz AlSaad
Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2021, 18(12), 6502; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/ijerph18126502 - 16 Jun 2021
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2847
Abstract
Background: Childhood obesity remains a public health issue globally. The latest estimate from the World Health Organization showed that over 340 million children and adolescents aged 5–19 were overweight or obese in 2016. Objective: Our study aimed to assess the density of fast [...] Read more.
Background: Childhood obesity remains a public health issue globally. The latest estimate from the World Health Organization showed that over 340 million children and adolescents aged 5–19 were overweight or obese in 2016. Objective: Our study aimed to assess the density of fast food outlets around educational facilities in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Methods: We employed geospatial and quantitative analyses using data on fast food outlets (from surveys conducted between November 2019 and May 2020) and educational facilities in Riyadh city. Data analyses conducted using ArcMap 10.6 and Stata 15 compared the density within 500 m and 500–1000 m from the facilities. Results: We found a high density of fast food outlets around educational facilities. Nearly 80% of fast food were within twelve-minute walking or five-minute driving distances from schools, and nearly 70% of all educational facilities had at least one fast food outlet within the buffer. We also found the densities were high within both the areas closer and the areas farther away from educational facilities. In addition, the density was significantly higher around private schools compared to government schools, and the density around girls-only schools and both-gender schools was higher than that around boys-only schools. Conclusion: There is a high density of fast food outlets around educational facilities in Saudi Arabia. Effective policies are needed to help reduce potential exposure to fast food among young people in Saudi Arabia and other countries with similar settings. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Childhood Obesity: Environment, Behavior, and Physiology)
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