# The role of racialized urban planning in shaping inequitable urban food environments and obesity disparities

> **NIH NIH R21** · UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON · 2022 · $253,313

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY
Black Americans experience a disproportionate burden of obesity, one of the most significant public health
challenges of the 21st century. Obesity is a major risk factor for multiple chronic conditions, including diabetes,
hypertension, osteoarthritis, and depression, and is associated with a lower quality of life and shortened life span.
Despite decades of public health interventions to address this problem, racial disparities in obesity persist and,
in some cases, are widening. Substantial evidence shows that neighborhood environments, including
segregation, deprivation, and food environments are associated with obesity risk and that these neighborhood
characteristics vary systematically between Black and White populations. However, a critical scientific gap
remains in understanding the root cause of obesity among communities of color – structural racism. The impact
of structural racism vis-à-vis historical racialized policies and urban planning decisions on current day inequitable
food environments and obesity disparities has received little systematic investigation. We propose to examine
three historical racialized policies and practices, starting in the late 1930s – redlining, “slum” clearance, and
highway placement – that have been hypothesized to have cemented residential racial segregation and
maintained an advantaged status of White populations by limiting commercial, housing, and economic
opportunities afforded to Black populations. To our knowledge, no studies have investigated these racialized
policies as structural determinants of obesity disparities. Our aims are to: 1) determine the extent to which
cumulative exposure to redlining category (red, yellow, blue, green), “slum” clearance, and highway development
is associated with contemporaneous and longitudinal change in racial composition, economic indicators, and
food environments of neighborhoods; 2) examine the historical and contemporary sociopolitical context of these
three racialized policies through qualitative analysis of city comprehensive plans, newspaper media, and key
informant interviews; and 3) examine the extent to which cumulative neighborhood-level exposure to these three
racialized policies is associated with increases in BMI and risk of obesity. We are proposing a short-term,
developmental R21 research grant to test the feasibility of linking newly compiled spatial and contextual urban
planning and policy data with the Multi-ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA) cohort, which contains in-depth,
longitudinal health data for people who were initially recruited from six cities. Findings from this work will be
consequential for refocusing scientific attention on upstream causes of obesogenic environments and obesity
disparities, and identifying structural solutions to advance racial equity in obesity prevention. In the future, we
will build on this developmental grant (R21 proposal) with additional cohorts that include BMI and diabetes health
data in ...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10508915
- **Project number:** 1R21MD017637-01
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
- **Principal Investigator:** Jessica C Jones-Smith
- **Activity code:** R21 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $253,313
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2022-09-16 → 2024-04-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10508915

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10508915, The role of racialized urban planning in shaping inequitable urban food environments and obesity disparities (1R21MD017637-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-26 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10508915. Licensed CC0.

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