Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2025

Advisor

Jeannette Manger

Abstract

Obesity, along with its comorbidities, has been significantly increasing worldwide for the pastfew decades. Our objective in this report is to investigate several factors that may be contributingto obesity rates in Ohio, specifically physical inactivity, access to healthy foods, and living in arural/urban county. Using data from the Ohio County Health Rankings for 2016 and 2023, wewere able to analyze the differences in obesity rates between rural and urban Ohio counties(RQ1), compare how access to healthy foods have changed over time in Ohio (RQ2), determinewhether there is a correlation between obesity and access to healthy foods for Ohio counties(RQ4), and examine how access to healthy foods and physical inactivity rates predict obesityrates for Ohio counties (RQ5). Additionally, County Health Rankings from Indiana andCalifornia in 2023 were also used to analyze the difference between Ohio, Indiana, andCalifornia with regard to the physical inactivity rates for 2023 (RQ3). The results found that ruralcounties had significantly higher rates of obesity (38.81%) compared to urban counties (36.37%)in Ohio for the year 2023 (P=0.002). Additionally, limited access to healthy foods in Ohiosignificantly increased from 5.04% to 6.14% between the years 2016 and 2023 (P<0.001).Physical inactivity was also found to be significantly decreased in California (21.47%) comparedto Ohio (27.24%) and Indiana (26.46%). Although there was no correlation found betweenaccess to healthy foods and obesity, physical inactivity was found to impact obesity rates in aregression analysis.

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