Impact of the social and natural environment on preschool-age children weight

Abstract

Background: The complex impact of environmental and social factors on preschool children being overweight/obese is unclear. We examined the associations between the levels of green space exposure and the risk of being overweight/obese for 4-6 year-old children and assessed the impact of maternal education on these associations. Methods: This cross-sectional study included 1489 mother-child pairs living in Kaunas, Lithuania, in 2012-2013. We assessed children overweight/obesity by standardized questionnaires using international body mass index cut-off points, and the level of greenness exposures by satellite-derived normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) of each child's home and by the distance to a nearest city park. The maternal education was used as the SES indicator. We used logistic regression models to investigate the strength of the associations. Results: Children from families with poorer maternal education, pathological mother-child relations and smoking mothers, and living in areas with less greenness exposure (NDVI-100 m), had significantly higher odds ratios of being overweight/obese. Lower maternal education and distance to a city park modified the effect of greenness cover level exposure on the risk of children being overweight/obese. Conclusions: Higher greenness exposure in the residential settings has beneficial effects on children's physical development. The green spaces exposures for psychosocial stress management is recommended as a measure to prevent overweight/obesity among children.

The study was supported by the European Community’s Seventh Framework Program (FP7/2007−2013) under grant agreement No. 308333—the HELIX project, and the grant of the Lithuanian Agency for Science Innovation and Technology on 13 September 2015, No. 31V-77.