PSE obesity supplement to PA Moves

Project Summary / Abstract This application is being submitted in response to the Notice of Special Interest (NOSI) identified as NOT-CA- 25-004. Suboptimal health and nutritional outcomes, including obesity, are the result of generational and historical inequities that have cut across social domains, including housing conditions, financial stability, transportational quality, and access to educational attainment. For example, for individuals who live in geographic areas with limited access to quality greenspace or with high levels of crime, it may be difficult to spend time outside one’s home. Lack of exercise, loneliness, or higher perceived stress all have health consequences. In fact, more than decade ago, scientists began pointing to ‘systems science,’ as the way forward in obesity research. By addressing the complex, interrelated forces driving proximal and distal measures of obesity, we may be able to address rising obesity rates, prevalence, and disparities. While the parent study, 5R01CA268017, “PA Moves,” is an important intervention trial focused on physically inactive rural residents, many of the issues participants face around access opportunity cut across the rural-urban divide. Bringing together the social, educational, and governmental systems on neighborhood, community, and regional levels is a foundational step to larger policy efforts. Specifically, understanding multilevel (i.e., individual, neighborhood, policy) and multisectoral (e.g., housing, city planning, education, healthcare) approaches can maximize the success of efforts to address key modifiable risk factors. The goals of this proposed supplement are aligned with NOT-CA-25-004 Administrative Supplements for Assessing Capacity to Address Obesity for Cancer Prevention and Control. We wish to support early foundational efforts to help form the scaffolding to address obesity on a larger level. Specifically we will 1) Examine the prevalence of obesity in the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) Hillman Cancer Center catchment area, with a focus on the City of Pittsburgh; 2) Carry out an environmental scan of key collaborators and the policy landscape in the City of Pittsburgh addressing obesity and its determinants, and 3) Convene representatives of the groups to discuss and report out on the community and organizational readiness to develop and evaluate a whole of systems approach to obesity including both enhanced obesity care, prevention, and Policy, Systems, and Environmental (PSE) approaches to both these aspects of obesity.