Robert Szyngiel

This paper is a study of the social, physical and commercial infrastructure in Canadian communities with high and low rates of obesity in order to better understand the determinants of this growing epidemic. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the effects of different aggregated factors on obesity prevalence within these selected Canadian communities. These particular factors are associated with the behavioural, socio-economic status and infrastructure characteristics of the communities. These variables are taken from the Statistics Canada's Canadian Community Health Survey, Centre for the Study of Commercial Activity (CSCA) datasets and Census profile for Census Subdivisions (CSDs). A multiple regression analysis was run and a model to .. predict obesity prevalence rate using average dwelling cost, weak sense of belonging to local community, % Aboriginal, Recent Immigrant % and Low , Physical Activity. The final model had an ~ value of 0.645 which indicates that it explained about two thirds of the variation in percent obesity. close