Neighborhood social cohesion and safety in low-income Latino neighborhoods in California: How do they impact the health of parents?

BACKGROUND: Neighborhood social cohesion and perceptions of safety have been associated with several health behaviors. Specifically, studies have shown that cohesive neighborhoods prevent maladaptive health behaviors and perceptions of safety facilitate healthy behaviors. OBJECTIVE: To examine differences in neighborhood-level factors shown to have predicted selected health behaviors in 14 low-income minority communities in California. METHODS: The 2009 California Health Interview Survey oversampled 14 Building Healthy Communities (BHC), a ten-year initiative of The California Endowment. Adults in (n=3,635) were randomly selected to complete this telephone survey if they lived one of the 14 BHC communities and were age 18-40 or a parent/guardian of a child age 0-17. 12 neighborhoods were majority Latino. Neighborhood factors of social cohesion and perceptions of safety were examined as predictors of binge drinking (BD), regular physical activity (RPA), and obesity using multivariate logistic regression. RESULTS: In models with social cohesion, perceived neighborhood safety and age, neither cohesion nor perceived safety were significant predictors of RPA (AOR=0.96, p=.49; AOR=0.83, p=.35), BD (AOR=0.93, p=.40; AOR=1.10, p=.63) or obesity (AOR=1.07, p=.22; AOR=1.34, p=.11). After controlling for socio-demographics, acculturation, insurance status, health factors and site, neighborhood social cohesion and perceived neighborhood safety were not significant predictors of RPA (AOR=0.96, p=.30; AOR=0.69, p=.08), BD (AOR=1.0, p=.85; AOR=1.10, p=.58) or obesity (AOR=1.05, p=.27; AOR=1.29, p=.17). CONCLUSIONS: Social cohesion and perceptions of safety were not predictive of BD, RPA, or obesity rates, even after adjusting for various socio-demographic factors, suggesting that other factors may influence poor health behaviors in low income Latino neighborhoods.