Preventive Medicine just published our paper on neighborhood park access and BMI among residents of New York City.  These analyses were part of our ongoing work the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene to analyze their health surveillance data in conjunction with measures of neighborhood context.  In this report we showed that higher neighborhood park access and the quality of those parks (extent to which parks were free of graffiti, litter, trash and broken glass) were associated with lower BMI scores among residents.  This report also showed that higher neighborhood walkability was associated with lower BMI, while neighborhood poverty and homicide rates were associated with higher BMI for residents.

The graph below plots, after adjustment for differences in survey respondent’s socio-demographic characteristics, the difference in BMI, and the 95% confidence interval, associated with differences equivalent to the inter-quartile range in neighborhood conditions across NYC zip codes.