CSDE Affiliates Melissa Knox (Economics), Jessica Jones-Smith (Health Systems & Population Health, Epidemiology), Anirban Basu (Health Economics, Health Services), and CSDE Trainee Tom Lindman (Public Policy & Governance) co-authored an article in Pediatrics, titled “Universal Free School Meals Policy and Childhood Obesity“. The study was lead-authored by PhD student, Anna M. Localio (Health Systems & Population Health), senior-authored by Jones-Smith and funded by an R01 from NICHD. The Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), a universal free school meals policy, increases school meal participation by allowing schools in low-income areas to provide free breakfast and lunch to all students; however, its impact on obesity remains uncertain. The objective of this study is to estimate the association of CEP with child obesity. Using a balanced sample of CEP-eligible public schools in California, the authors used a difference-in-differences approach for staggered policy adoption to compare change in obesity prevalence among participating vs. non-participating schools between 2013 and 2019.

CSDE Affiliate Clayton Page Aldern published a new book, entitled The Weight of Nature. Climate change has had serious impacts on our world, including rising sea levels, extreme weather, and severe heat. Yet its effects on our brains constitute a public-health crisis that has gone largely unreported. In his book, Aldern synthesizes emerging neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral economics of global warming and brain health. Clayton Aldern is a neuroscientist turned environmental journalist whose work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Guardian, The New Republic, Mother Jones, Vox, Newsweek, The Economist, Scientific American, and Grist, where he is a senior data reporter.

CSDE Affiliate Donald Chi released an article with colleagues in the International Journal of Circumpolar Health, entitled “Identifying sources of variation in added sugar intake for Alaska Native children using a hair biomarker“. Sugars from sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) are an important risk factor for tooth decay. The study goal was to determine if there was variation in added sugar intake across communities and between and within households. In this cross-sectional study, intakes of total sugar, added sugar, and sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) were estimated for 282 Alaska Native children ages 0–10 years from 131 households in three Yukon-Kuskokwim (YK) Delta communities using biomarker equations based on hair carbon and nitrogen isotope ratios previously developed for the Yup’ik population.

CSDE Affiliate Joan Casey (Enviromental and Occupational Health Sciences) published an article with co-authors in Plos One, entitled “Missing Black males among preterm births in the US, 1995 to 2019“. In the US, non-Hispanic (NH) Black birthing persons show a two-fold greater risk of fetal death relative to NH white birthing persons. Since males more than females show a greater risk of fetal death, such loss in utero may affect the sex composition of live births born preterm (PTB; <37 weeks gestational age). We examine US birth data from 1995 to 2019 to determine whether the ratio of male to female preterm (i.e., PTB sex ratios) among NH Black births falls below that of NH whites and Hispanics.