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Objective:

To estimate variation between small areas in adult body mass index (BMI), and assess the importance of area level socioeconomic disadvantage in predicting BMI.

Methods:

We identified all census collector districts (CCDs) in the 20 innermost Local Government Areas in metropolitan Melbourne, Australia, and ranked them by the percentage of low income households (< $400/week). In all, 50 CCDs were randomly selected from the least, middle and most disadvantaged septiles of the ranked list and 4913 residents (61.4% participation rate) completed one of two surveys. Multilevel linear regression was used to estimate area level variance in BMI and the importance of area level socioeconomic disadvantage in predicting BMI.

Results:

There were significant variations in BMI between CCDs for women, even after adjustment for individual and area SES (P= 0.012); significant area variation was not found for …