This project provided supplemental funds for a study originally funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) focused on obesity and the built environment. This Obesity and the Built Environment (OBE) supplemental grant added to a larger previously funded OBE grant that evaluated the influence of community characteristics and the built environment on adolescent overweight in 26 communities scattered across Vermont and New Hampshire. This supplement expanded the set of observational measures used in the OBE grant to include features from the community level, parks and playgrounds, and trails. Data was collected using observational measures produced from Active Living Research supported projects, including the Irvine Minnesota Inventory, Physical Activity Resource Assessment (PARA) instrument, and the Path Environmental Audit Tool (PEAT). The additional observational measures were meant to support a much wider range of community measures of the built environment than would be possible otherwise.
