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Census Tract Food Tweets and Chronic Disease Outcomes in the U.S., 2015–2018

Author

Listed:
  • Yuru Huang

    (Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, University of Maryland School of Public Health, College Park, MD 20742, USA
    Co-first author.)

  • Dina Huang

    (Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, University of Maryland School of Public Health, College Park, MD 20742, USA
    Co-first author.)

  • Quynh C. Nguyen

    (Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, University of Maryland School of Public Health, College Park, MD 20742, USA)

Abstract

There is a growing recognition of social media data as being useful for understanding local area patterns. In this study, we sought to utilize geotagged tweets—specifically, the frequency and type of food mentions—to understand the neighborhood food environment and the social modeling of food behavior. Additionally, we examined associations between aggregated food-related tweet characteristics and prevalent chronic health outcomes at the census tract level. We used a Twitter streaming application programming interface (API) to continuously collect ~1% random sample of public tweets in the United States. A total of 4,785,104 geotagged food tweets from 71,844 census tracts were collected from April 2015 to May 2018. We obtained census tract chronic disease outcomes from the CDC 500 Cities Project. We investigated associations between Twitter-derived food variables and chronic outcomes (obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure) using the median regression. Census tracts with higher average calories per tweet, less frequent healthy food mentions, and a higher percentage of food tweets about fast food had higher obesity and hypertension prevalence. Twitter-derived food variables were not predictive of diabetes prevalence. Food-related tweets can be leveraged to help characterize the neighborhood social and food environment, which in turn are linked with community levels of obesity and hypertension.

Suggested Citation

  • Yuru Huang & Dina Huang & Quynh C. Nguyen, 2019. "Census Tract Food Tweets and Chronic Disease Outcomes in the U.S., 2015–2018," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 16(6), pages 1-8, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:16:y:2019:i:6:p:975-:d:214991
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Buys, D.R. & Howard, V.J. & McClure, L.A. & Buys, K.C. & Sawyer, P. & Allman, R.M. & Levitan, E.B., 2015. "Association between neighborhood disadvantage and hypertension prevalence, awareness, treatment, and control in older adults: Results from the University of Alabama at Birmingham Study of Aging," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 105(6), pages 1181-1188.
    2. Davis, B. & Carpenter, C., 2009. "Proximity of fast-food restaurants to schools and adolescent obesity," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 99(3), pages 505-510.
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    Cited by:

    1. Zhongyu He & Weijie Pan, 2022. "Food Acquisition during the COVID-19 Lockdown and Its Associations with the Physical–Digital Integrated Community Food Environment: A Case Study of Nanjing, China," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(13), pages 1-13, June.

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