BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES
The Child Opportunity Index (ChOI) is a publicly available surveillance tool that incorporates traditional and novel attributes of neighborhood conditions that may promote or inhibit healthy child development. The extent to which ChOI relates to individual-level cardiometabolic risk remains unclear.
METHODS
We geocoded residential addresses obtained from 743 participants in midchildhood (mean age 7.9 years) in Project Viva, a prebirth cohort from eastern Massachusetts, and linked each location with census tract-level ChOI data. We measured adiposity and cardiometabolic outcomes in midchildhood and early adolescence (mean age 13.1 years) and analyzed their associations with neighborhood-level ChOI in midchildhood using mixed-effects models, adjusting for individual and family sociodemographics.
RESULTS
On the basis of nationwide distributions of ChOI, 11.2% ( = 83) of children resided in areas of very low overall opportunity (ChOI score <20 U) and 55.3% ( = 411) resided in areas of very high (ChOI score ≥80 U) overall opportunity. Children who resided in areas with higher overall opportunity in midchildhood had persistently lower levels of C-reactive protein from midchildhood to early adolescence (per 25-U increase in ChOI score: β = .14 mg/L; 95% confidence interval, .28 to .00). Additionally, certain ChOI indicators, such as greater number of high-quality childhood education centers, greater access to healthy food, and greater proximity to employment in midchildhood, were associated with persistently lower adiposity, C-reactive protein levels, insulin resistance, and metabolic risk scores from midchildhood to early adolescence.
CONCLUSIONS
Our findings suggest more favorable neighborhood opportunities in midchildhood predict better cardiometabolic health from midchildhood to early adolescence.