ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sports Act. Living
Sec. Physical Activity in the Prevention and Management of Disease
Health Behaviors and Social Determinants of Health in Children from Under-resourced Communities: Does Weight Status Play a Role?
Provisionally accepted
Paul Son1
Yuxin Nie1
Qiaoyin Tan1
Amanda E. Staiano2
Fahui Wang3
Gang Hu2
Stewart Gordon4Peyton Murray2Cehong Luo3Yutian Zeng3Renee A. Underwood2,5
Senlin Chen1*- 1School of Kinesiology, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, United States
- 2Louisiana State University Pennington Biomedical Research Center, Baton Rouge, United States
- 3Louisiana State University Department of Geography & Anthropology, Baton Rouge, United States
- 4Louisiana Healthcare Connections, Baton Rouge, United States
- 5Southeastern Louisiana University, Hammond, United States
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
Background/Objectives: Social determinants of health (SDOHs) may affect children's health and health behaviors. This study aimed to understand the relationship between health behaviors and SDOHs in a child population from under-resourced communities (i.e., Medicaid eligible or enrolled, overweight or with obesity [OWOB], predominantly Black or African Americans). Methods: Following a stratified sampling strategy, parent proxies (N = 311) completed an online survey to measure participants (5-12 years old) health behaviors and SDOHs including socioeconomic status (SES; Area Deprivation Index [ADI], household income), living conditions, and food insecurity. Results: Participants with OWOB showed greater screen time than normal weight (NW) children. Health behaviors (i.e., physical activity, screen time, sleep, dietary behavior) generally favored the higher SES group (considering household income and ADI). SDOHs (as a variant) correlated with health behaviors (the other variant; Canonical r = 0.27, p < 0.05). Of the SDOHs, household chaos negatively correlated with regular bedtime routines in both weight status groups (NW: r = - 0.19, p < 0.05; OWOB: r = - 0.24, p < 0.01). Adverse living conditions and greater food insecurity were associated with more screen time and, unexpectedly associated with more physical activity (r ranged from 0.19 to 0.22, p < 0.05) in NW participants. Conclusions: The findings unraveled differences in health behaviors by weight status and SDOHs. SDOHs showed significant correlations with health behaviors, and these correlations were slightly greater in NW children. Weight status plays an important role in the relationship between health behaviors and SDOHs among children from under-resourced communities.
Keywords: childhood obesity1, health behavior2, healthdisparities4, social determinants of health3, weight status5
Received: 30 Aug 2025; Accepted: 08 Dec 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Son, Nie, Tan, Staiano, Wang, Hu, Gordon, Murray, Luo, Zeng, Underwood and Chen. 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: Senlin Chen
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.