ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Built Environ.
Sec. Urban Science
Volume 11 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fbuil.2025.1644264
This article is part of the Research TopicNew Approaches for Sustainable & Resilient Processes and Products of Social Housing Development in the Arabian Gulf Countries - Vol 2View all 4 articles
Assessment of Adolescent Health Condition in the United Arab Emirates: Role of Parent's Perception of the Micro and Meso Built Environment Variables
Provisionally accepted
- Rabdan Academy, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Parent perception and willingness to let their children walk in the arid region of UAE is impacted by complexity of environmental factors and children's own engagement in physical activity. This study therefore investigates responses from parents' perception of the microenvironment such as sidewalk, streets, traffic, safety, and appeal of the built environment and meso-environmental factors such as walkability index, traffic exposure at school and residences, and distance to school on the health measured as underweight, normal weight, overweight and obesity levels of children. A cross-sectional study using survey responses from (up to) 163 school-going children aged 14 to 20 years (10th to 12th graders) from seven schools in Al Ain were analyzed using stepwise multinomial regression of four factors: Children's characteristics, parent's perception of the micro and meso-environmental variables and parent's characteristics. The outcome of the study reports that gender and physical activity scores predict the obese and underweight categories of the health condition of the adolescents, while age predicts the overweight and obesity in the UAE children. Built environmental factors such as walkability index, traffic exposure, and distance to school predict the overweight and obesity in adolescents. As for parent perceptions, their willingness and perception predict the underweight category while their education levels predict the overweight and obesity in the adolescents. Design and policy recommendations to enhance the parent's perception of microenvironment and the design of meso-environment are discussed to improve the health of adolescents in the UAE.
Keywords: Adolescent Health, Parent perception, Arid environment, United Arab Emirates, Walking to school
Received: 10 Jun 2025; Accepted: 26 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Maghelal. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Praveen Kumar Maghelal, Rabdan Academy, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.