ABSTRACT
Obesity is a multifactorial disease with complex etiology involving complex interactions between biological, physiological, behavioral, cultural, socioeconomic, and structural factors. Social and economic forces shape access to a wide range of resources that may exacerbate individual predispositions to weight gain over the life course, including individual-level factors (e.g., income, education) and neighborhood-level factors (e.g., social networks and norms, community design). In the U.S. and other nations, socioeconomic status and race/ethnicity are intertwined, with higher proportions of persons in historically marginalized groups having fewer social and economic resources compared to more privileged groups, resulting in inequities in obesity. Globally, dramatic changes in environmental and societal structures, including urbanization, contribute to increases in obesity in all areas of the world, in addition to contributing to the burden of malnutrition and climate change. Thus, it is critical that domestic and international efforts to prevent, treat, and manage obesity address the drivers of inequities in obesity risk, including structural approaches designed to change the settings and context in which individual behaviors are shaped, from the micro level (e.g., home, school, work) to the macro level (e.g., state, and federal levels).
