Beyond individual responsibility: exploring lay understandings of the contribution of environments on personal trajectories of obesity
Beyond individual responsibility: exploring lay understandings of the contribution of environments on personal trajectories of obesity
Introduction: reversing the upward trajectory of obesity requires responding by including the multiple influences on weight control. Research has focused on individual behaviours, overlooking the environments where individuals spend their lives and shape lifestyles. Thus, there is a need for lay understandings of the impact of environments as a cause and solution to obesity. This research aimed to understand the influence of environments on the adoption of health practices in adults with obesity and to identify lay strategies with which to address environmental barriers to behaviour change.
Methods: nineteen adults with a history of obesity living in the United Kingdom were interviewed through video conferencing between May 2020 and March 2021. Semi-structured interviews and socio-demographic questionnaires were used, and data analysed through hermeneutic phenomenology informed reflexive thematic analysis.
Results: three main themes were created: living with convenience and normalcy: the increased accessibility of unhealthy food, people interacting with digital media for positive practice change, and the need to prioritise prevention in schools, the National Health Service and the food industry.
Conclusions: the food environment was the major barrier, while interactions with social media was the most important opportunity to adopt healthy practices. The National Health Service was considered an obesogenic environment, something relevant since it has been traditionally recognised as an obesity management system. The perceptions from individuals with a history of obesity provide new suggestions on the influence of previously overlooked environments to design more adequate and effective interventions and policies that consider, more than in the past, the environments where people spend their lives.
Serrano-Fuentes, Nestor
a61ca307-6fd1-42c9-9d81-315f4027f4aa
Rogers, Anne
105eeebc-1899-4850-950e-385a51738eb7
Portillo, Mari Carmen
f913b5c5-b949-48f2-b1d0-eb7505484d5c
8 May 2024
Serrano-Fuentes, Nestor
a61ca307-6fd1-42c9-9d81-315f4027f4aa
Rogers, Anne
105eeebc-1899-4850-950e-385a51738eb7
Portillo, Mari Carmen
f913b5c5-b949-48f2-b1d0-eb7505484d5c
Serrano-Fuentes, Nestor, Rogers, Anne and Portillo, Mari Carmen
(2024)
Beyond individual responsibility: exploring lay understandings of the contribution of environments on personal trajectories of obesity.
PLoS ONE, 19 (5), [e0302927].
(doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0302927).
Abstract
Introduction: reversing the upward trajectory of obesity requires responding by including the multiple influences on weight control. Research has focused on individual behaviours, overlooking the environments where individuals spend their lives and shape lifestyles. Thus, there is a need for lay understandings of the impact of environments as a cause and solution to obesity. This research aimed to understand the influence of environments on the adoption of health practices in adults with obesity and to identify lay strategies with which to address environmental barriers to behaviour change.
Methods: nineteen adults with a history of obesity living in the United Kingdom were interviewed through video conferencing between May 2020 and March 2021. Semi-structured interviews and socio-demographic questionnaires were used, and data analysed through hermeneutic phenomenology informed reflexive thematic analysis.
Results: three main themes were created: living with convenience and normalcy: the increased accessibility of unhealthy food, people interacting with digital media for positive practice change, and the need to prioritise prevention in schools, the National Health Service and the food industry.
Conclusions: the food environment was the major barrier, while interactions with social media was the most important opportunity to adopt healthy practices. The National Health Service was considered an obesogenic environment, something relevant since it has been traditionally recognised as an obesity management system. The perceptions from individuals with a history of obesity provide new suggestions on the influence of previously overlooked environments to design more adequate and effective interventions and policies that consider, more than in the past, the environments where people spend their lives.
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journal.pone.0302927
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Accepted/In Press date: 13 April 2024
Published date: 8 May 2024
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© 2024 Serrano-Fuentes et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Copyright: © 2024 Serrano-Fuentes et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
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Local EPrints ID: 490010
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/490010
ISSN: 1932-6203
PURE UUID: 60053b40-9f5f-48cb-818b-74649391b003
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Date deposited: 13 May 2024 16:35
Last modified: 05 Jun 2024 02:06
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Nestor Serrano-Fuentes
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