Community Context and Obesity among Chinese Adults: A Longitudinal and Multilevel Analysis

Hongwei Xu, Brown University
Tao Liu, Bio Med Community Health

Overweight and obesity have posed a public health challenge not only to populations in developed countries but also those in developing countries such as China. Community context has been related to individual overweight and obesity risks in developed countries. It is unclear whether these associations will hold for the Chinese populations. Previous cross-sectional multilevel studies also ignore that community context is not constant, but may change over time. This study addresses these literature gaps by conducting a longitudinal and multilevel analysis of community effects on body weight status among the Chinese adults. Three-level random intercept multinomial regression is used to model the risks of overweight and obesity, taking normal weight as the reference. Preliminary descriptive statistics show an accelerated increase in the prevalence of overweight and obese Chinese adults and community context changes that may affect individual weight. The issue of intensive computation will be addressed in the next-step of this analysis.