Short reportIndividual and environmental correlates of dietary fat intake in rural communities: A structural equation model analysis
Section snippets
Design
This analysis used baseline survey data from the Healthy Rural Communities 2 (HRC2) study, supplemented by observational measures of neighborhood food environments. HRC2 is a longitudinal descriptive study of the environmental and individual determinants of these behaviors. For the present analysis, HRC2 survey data were linked by participant addresses to restaurant and food store addresses that were geocoded using ArcMap 9.2 to assess distance between points (“as the crow flies”) (ESRI, 2006,
Healthy rural communities 2 participant characteristics
Of all 750 individuals screened, 79.3% were eligible, and 88.6% of eligible persons completed the survey. Table 1 shows baseline background characteristics of participants (n = 527). Just over half of participants in the sample were White (50.5%) and female (53.9%). Nearly half of the participants were aged 39–49 years (47.2%), and the mean age was 51.1 years. Most participants resided in small towns (51.8%) and were married or living with a partner (63.0%), had at least some college education
Discussion
This study examined the potential of a social ecological model to explain dietary fat intake in a rural population. Results support that multiple levels of influence are operating to explain dietary fat intake for people living in a rural community. The overall model predicted dietary fat intake well, suggesting that dietary fat intake is influenced by a complex interplay of individual, social and environmental factors. In addition, these relationships were found to be stronger for women than
Acknowledgements
Funding for this research was provided through cooperative agreement #U48 DP 000043 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for the EmoryPrevention Research Center (EPRC). Partial support for Karen Glanz’s effort came from a Georgia Cancer Coalition Distinguished Scholar Award. The authors acknowledge the contributions of the EPRC’s Community Advisory Board to the design and conduct of this research and the Southwest Georgia Cancer Coalition for coordinating data collection.
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