A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that adding slot machines to California casinos was linked to a modest reduction in obesity rates for Native American children.
Researchers found that for every slot machine added per child, there was a corresponding 0.19 percent reduction in obesity risk. The conclusions were based on an examination of 117 California school districts on lands of tribes that have opened casinos. The researchers examined gym class fitness records of 22,863 children age 7 to 18 between 2001 and 2012, comparing data before and after casino construction and expansion.
“Opening or expanding a casino was associated with increased economic resources and decreased risk of childhood overweight/obesity,” wrote lead author Jessica Jones-Smith, an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, and her colleagues.
They wrote that the overall prevalence of obesity among the studied children was 48 percent. On average, communities that added slot machines reduced that rate by about 5 percent.
In an accompanying editorial, Dr. Neal Halfon, a professor of pediatrics at UCLA, cautioned against making sweeping conclusions regarding child welfare and gambling.
“A casino in every neighborhood is not the answer, but increasing family income and removing other pressures that reduce the capacity of families to invest in their children should be part of the solution,” Halfon wrote.
