The University of Michigan Medical School, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA.
San Francisco State University, San Francisco, California, USA.
Obesity (Silver Spring). 2022 May;30(5):1116-1125. doi: 10.1002/oby.23416.
Recent studies have observed that racial or ethnic adult health disparities revealed in national data dissipate in racially integrated communities, supporting the theory that "place, not race" shapes the nature and magnitude of racial/ethnic health disparities. This study tested this theory among children.
In 2020, the racial/ethnic childhood obesity disparities within integrated schools and between segregated schools were estimated using statewide cross-sectional data collected in 2019 on fifth, seventh, and ninth grade students from California public schools.
School segregation accounted for a large part of the obesity disparities between White children and children of color (Latino, Black, and Filipino children). In racially integrated schools, obesity disparities were much smaller than those in statewide data, whereas racial or ethnic childhood obesity disparities were larger when comparing children in majority-White schools with those attending schools with a majority enrollment of children of color, except for Asian children, who generally had lower obesity rates than their White peers.
School-level racial segregation is a salient contributor to racial/ethnic childhood obesity disparities. Reducing obesity disparities may be particularly effective if place-level interventions target socioeconomically disadvantaged integrated schools and segregated schools attended primarily by children of color.
最近的研究观察到，在全国数据中显现出的种族或民族成年人健康差距在种族融合社区中消失了，这支持了“环境而非种族”塑造了种族/民族健康差距的性质和程度的理论。本研究在儿童中检验了这一理论。
2020 年，利用 2019 年在加利福尼亚公立学校收集的五年级、七年级和九年级学生的全州横断面数据，估计了融合学校和隔离学校中各族裔儿童肥胖差距。
学校隔离在白人和有色人种（拉丁裔、黑人和菲律宾裔儿童）儿童之间的肥胖差距中占很大一部分。在种族融合的学校中，肥胖差距比全州数据中的差距小得多，而在比较大多数是白人学生的学校和主要是有色人种学生的学校的儿童时，种族或民族的儿童肥胖差距更大，除了亚洲儿童，他们的肥胖率通常低于其白人同龄人。
学校层面的种族隔离是导致种族/民族儿童肥胖差距的一个重要因素。如果针对社会经济处于不利地位的融合学校和主要招收有色人种学生的隔离学校的地方层面的干预措施能够减少肥胖差距，那么这可能会特别有效。
