ArticlePreventing chronic disease2013
A multilevel approach to estimating small area childhood obesity prevalence at the census block-group level.
Article in Preventing chronic disease, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Research on neighborhood effects on health in the United States: A systematic review of study characteristics.Social science & medicine (1982) · 2016Pooled it
- Estimating county-level dental care utilization among adults in California using multilevel modeling with raking approach.Archives of public health = Archives belges de sante publique · 2025Article
- Weighted EHR-based prevalence estimates for hypertension at the state and local levels in Louisiana.BMC public health · 2025Article
- Neighborhood built environment typologies and adiposity in children and adolescents.International journal of obesity (2005) · 2022Article
- Estimates of Childhood Overweight and Obesity at the Region, State, and County Levels: A Multilevel Small-Area Estimation Approach.American journal of epidemiology · 2021Article
- Small Area Estimates of Populations With Chronic Conditions for Community Preparedness for Public Health Emergencies.American journal of public health · 2019Article
- Assessing local chlamydia screening performance by combining survey and administrative data to account for differences in local population characteristics.Scientific reports · 2019Article
- Characterizing Micro-scale Disparities in Childhood Obesity: Examining the Influence of Multilevel Factors on 4-Year Changes in BMI, Healthy Eating, and Physical Activity, Among a Cohort of Children Residing in Disadvantaged Urban Enclaves.Frontiers in public health · 2019Article
- Use of Fine-scale Geospatial Units and Population Data to Evaluate Access to Emergency Care.The western journal of emergency medicine · 2018Article
- Multilevel model to estimate county-level untreated dental caries among US children aged 6-9years using the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.Preventive medicine · 2018Article
- Parental optimism about childhood obesity-related disease risks.International journal of obesity (2005) · 2017Article
- Inter-relationships between objective and subjective measures of the residential environment among urban African American women.Annals of epidemiology · 2017Article
- Misclassification errors from postal code-based geocoding to assign census geography in Nova Scotia, Canada.Canadian journal of public health = Revue canadienne de sante publique · 2016Article
- Geography of Adolescent Obesity in the U.S., 2007-2011.American journal of preventive medicine · 2016Article
- Using Small-Area Estimation to Calculate the Prevalence of Smoking by Subcounty Geographic Areas in King County, Washington, Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, 2009-2013.Preventing chronic disease · 2016Article
- Predicting Periodontitis at State and Local Levels in the United States.Journal of dental research · 2016Article
- Validation of multilevel regression and poststratification methodology for small area estimation of health indicators from the behavioral risk factor surveillance system.American journal of epidemiology · 2015Article
- Estimating prevalence of overweight or obese children and adolescents in small geographic areas using publicly available data.Preventing chronic disease · 2015Article
- Electronic health records and community health surveillance of childhood obesity.American journal of preventive medicine · 2015Article
- Neighborhood sociodemographic predictors of Serious Emotional Disturbance (SED) in schools: demonstrating a small area estimation method in the National Comorbidity Survey (NCS-A) Adolescent Supplement.Administration and policy in mental health · 2015Article
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4 authors.
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Abstract
introductionTraditional survey methods for obtaining nationwide small-area estimates (SAEs) of childhood obesity are costly. This study applied a geocoded national health survey in a multilevel modeling framework to estimate prevalence of childhood obesity at the census block-group level.
methodsWe constructed a multilevel logistic regression model to evaluate the influence of individual demographic characteristics, zip code, county, and state on the childhood obesity measures from the 2007 National Survey of Children's Health. The obesity risk for a child in each census block group was then estimated on the basis of this multilevel model. We compared direct survey and model-based SAEs to evaluate the model specification.
resultsMultilevel models in this study explained about 60% of state-level variances associated with childhood obesity, 82.8% to 86.5% of county-level, and 93.1% of zip code-level. The 95% confidence intervals of block- group level SAEs have a wide range (0.795-20.0), a low median of 2.02, and a mean of 2.12. The model-based SAEs of childhood obesity prevalence ranged from 2.3% to 54.7% with a median of 16.0% at the block-group level.
conclusionThe geographic variances among census block groups, counties, and states demonstrate that locale may be as significant as individual characteristics such as race/ethnicity in the development of the childhood obesity epidemic. Our estimates provide data to identify priority areas for local health programs and to establish feasible local intervention goals. Model-based SAEs of population health outcomes could be a tool of public health assessment and surveillance.
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