"Parents and children are more likely to have overweight or obesity if they live in a county with a higher rate of obesity..."

Obesity may involve ‘social contagion’ component

Parents and children are more likely to have overweight or obesity if they live in a county with a higher rate of obesity, according to findings published in JAMA Pediatrics.

“Disentangling the extent to which the clustering of obesity within networks is due to social contagion vs. the competing explanations of self-selection (ie, homophily and residential selection) and shared environment is crucial because of their different implications for public health policy-making,” Ashlesha Datar, PhD, of the Center for Economic and Social Research at the University of Southern California, and Nancy Nicosia, PhD, of the RAND Corporation in Boston, wrote in the study background. “A contagion effect would favor policies that target social networks, such as directing interventions toward well-connected individuals within networks to leverage their potential multiplier effect or interventions that seek to change norms and attitudes. A shared environment effect would favor interventions that target aspects of the built or policy environment. However, self-selection would suggest a more limited role for interventions focusing on social networks or built environments.”