Childhood Obesity Rates in Schools with Socioeconomic Differences
A study performed by Piontak & Schulman (2016) looked at the importance of schools as a site for interventions to prevent childhood obesity. The purpose of this study was to examine how variables measuring the socioeconomic and racial composition of schools and counties affect the rate of obesity in children from third to fifth grade. There was found to be a statistically significant different between schools and counties. There also was a statistical difference between poverty and racial segregation in the same direction. Schools with a high poverty level had an increased rate on the likelihood of obesity. This showed that the students in these schools had a 1.15 times higher change of being obese than the children in the economically integrated schools. Schools that were isolated socioeconomically from the lower income schools were shown to have a lower rate of obesity. It was seen that children in minority segregated schools had higher rates of ob