Document Type

Peer-Reviewed Article

Publication Date

3-2018

Abstract

We examined the relative importance of 23 community issues among elected officials and health directors in Connecticut in 2016. For this cross-sectional study, 74 elected officials (40.7% response rate) and 47 health directors (62.7% response rate), who were purposively sampled, completed a questionnaire to rate their perceived importance of 23 community issues. Eight of these issues were related to active living, healthy eating, or obesity. We used χ2 tests to evaluate differences in responses. Compared with elected officials, health directors significantly more often perceived obesity, access to healthy groceries, poor nutrition, lack of pedestrian walkways, and pedestrian safety as important. Elected officials significantly more often than health directors perceived lack of good jobs, quality of public education, and cost of living as important. Health advocates should work with both groups to develop and frame policies to address both upstream (eg, jobs, education) and downstream (eg, healthy eating policies) determinants of obesity.

Comments

HHS/Open publication.

This study was supported by a University Creativity and Research Grant from Sacred Heart University.

DOI

10.5888/pcd15.170331

PMID

29494331

Publication

Preventing Chronic Disease

Volume

15

Issue

E28

Publisher

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Pages

1-10

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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