Leveraging social influence to address overweight and obesity using agent-based models: the role of adolescent social networks.

ABSTRACT: The prevalence of adolescent overweight and obesity (hereafter, simply "overweight") in the US has increased over the past several decades. Individually-targeted prevention and treatment strategies targeting individuals have been disappointing, leading some to propose leveraging social networks to improve interventions. We hypothesized that social network dynamics (social marginalization; homophily on body mass index, BMI) and the strength of peer influence would increase or decrease the proportion of network member (agents) becoming overweight over a simulated year, and that peer influence would operate differently in social networks with greater overweight. We built an agent-based model (ABM) using results from R-SIENA. ABMs allow for the exploration of potential interventions using simu

SUBMITTER: Zhang J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4306600 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature