The May 2015 issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine includes five articles around the theme: "Built Environment Assessment and Interventions for Obesity Prevention: Moving the Field Forward." The articles are the result of the 2013 Built Environment Assessment Training (BEAT) Institute symposium which brought together obesity, built environment, and nutrition experts to identify areas for future research, intervention development and training. The issue collects
The introductory article summarizes the Institute's goals in hosting the symposium:
- Tools for measuring food and activity environments.
- Advancing technology use in built environment assessment research and practice.
- Making measurement instruments more feasible to disseminate for community use and advocacy.
- Enhancing use of built environment measures for policy change and surveillance.
The other articles explore new approaches to seeing food and activity levels in a community, highlight trends in environmental, context–based physical activity technology, and offer ways to move built environment assessment beyond research and into community practice to impact local change for more livable communities.
All articles are available to read or download as PDFs.