Using data from the US Census Bureau, American Community Survey, the US Environmental Protection Agency, and the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, RTI International created and interactive map showing the risk of obesity in different neighborhoods in Sacramento.
The map shows that Sacramento actually has a smaller number of neighborhoods with high obesity rates compared to other cities in California.

However, the results could be inaccurate since they are not a result of information gleaned from real individual residents. Rather, the researchers relied on statistics for income, ethnicity, age and household size to create “virtual households.” In other words, the map really a compilation of “educated guesses” about obesity risk in different Sacramento neighborhoods.

“It’s not that everybody in those areas are obese,” said Bill Wheaton, director of RTI’s Geospatial Science and Technology Program. “It’s more risk-based.”

Wheaton is hoping that the map can aid health workers to discover the places where the risk for obesity might be greater. The hope is that then policymakers will respond with public interventions such as building more parks, not allowing so many fast food restaurants into the area, and encouraging more community health programming in those higher risk neighborhoods.