Place of birth, duration of residence, neighborhood immigrant composition and body mass index in New York City
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BioMed Central
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Place of birth, duration of residence, neighborhood immigrant composition and body mass index in New York City Yoosun Park1, Kathryn M Neckerman2, James Quinn2, Christopher Weiss2 and Andrew Rundle*3 Address: 1School for Social Work, Smith College, Northampton MA, USA, 2Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy, Columbia University, New York NY, USA and 3Department of Epidemiology, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York NY, USA Email: Yoosun Park - [email protected]; Kathryn M Neckerman - [email protected]; James Quinn - [email protected]; Christopher Weiss - [email protected]; Andrew Rundle* - [email protected] * Corresponding author
Published: 6 April 2008 International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity 2008, 5:19 5868-5-19
doi:10.1186/1479-
Received: 26 September 2007 Accepted: 6 April 2008
This article is available from: http://www.ijbnpa.org/content/5/1/19 © 2008 Park et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract Background: Past research has suggested that changes in culture explain the substantial weight gain seen in many immigrant groups with length of residence in the U.S. and across generations of residence in the U.S. However, it has been theorized that those settling in immigrant and co-ethnic neighborhoods may be buffered against this acculturative process and will be more likely to maintain home country dietary and physical activity patterns. To investigate this theory we incorporated measures of neighborhood immigrant composition into analyses of individual's body mass index (BMI) and generation of immigration and duration of residence in the U.S. Methods: Multilevel analyses were performed using objectively measured height and weight and survey data on diet and physical activity from a sample of 13,011 residents of New York City. Census data were used to calculate the proportion of foreign-born residents and extent of household linguistic isolation in a ½ mile radial buffer around the subject's home. Results: Foreign birth was associated with a significantly lower BMI (-1.09 BMI units, P < 0.001). This association was weakest among Asians (-0.66 BMI units, P = 0.08) and strongest among BlackCaribbeans (-1.41 BMI units, P = 0.07). After controlling for individual level variables, neighborhood proportion foreign-born was not associated with BMI, but increasing neighborhood linguistic isolation was inversely associated with BMI among Hispanics (-2.97 BMI units, P = 0.03). Furthermore among Hispanics, the association between foreign birth and BMI was stronger in low linguistic isolation neighborhoods (-1.36 BMI units, P < 0.0001) as compared to in high linguistic isolation levels (-0.42 BMI units, P = 0.79). Increasing duration o
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