County-level residential segregation and sedentary behavior in US adults.

Background: Excessive sedentary behavior (SB) is highly prevalent among adults in the United States (US). From a socio-ecological perspective, residential segregation may affect SB; however, this remains understudied. Thus, we aimed to examine associations between county-level segregation and sedentary time in a nationwide sample of US adults.

Methods: For this cross-sectional study, we analyzed data from 2,637 US adults aged 20-75 years (mean age [45.1 years], female [50.6%]) from the population-based AmeriSpeak panel in 2019. Participants completed the Activities Completed over Time in 24-hours (ACT24) previous-day recall, which is a validated population-level measure of total daily SB (hours/day). Residential segregation was expressed as the isolation index at the county level for non-Hispanic (NH) Black and Hispanic adults (vs. all other racial and/or ethnic groups). Isolation index ranges from 0 to 1, with a higher value indicating higher segregation. We used survey-weighted linear regression models to examine the relationships of race and/or ethnicity specific isolation index with total daily SB, adjusting for covariates. Models were also stratified by sex.

Results: US adults reported a mean of 9.5 h/day of sedentary time, with NH Black and Hispanic adults reporting 9.8 and 8.9 h/day, respectively. NH Black segregation was not related to sedentary time (β = -0.30 [-2.53, 1.94], p = 0.790). Hispanic segregation also showed no relationship (β = 0.32, [-1.64, 2.28], p = 0.743). Moreover, sex-stratified analyses showed null associations.

Conclusions: We found no association between residential segregation and SB among NH Black and Hispanic adults, and these associations did not vary by sex. Future studies should aim to replicate this study with larger samples of underrepresented minority populations.