OBJECTIVE: Food environments are a major determinant of children\'s nutritional status. Scarce evidence on food environments exists in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). This study aims to fill this gap by documenting the obesogenicity of food environments around schools in Greater Tunis, Tunisia - an LMIC of the Middle East and North Africa region with an ongoing nutrition transition and increasing rates of childhood obesity.
METHODS: In this cross-sectional study, we assessed built food environments around fifty primary schools. Ground-truthing was performed to collect geographic coordinates and pictures of food retailers and food advertisement sets within an 800-m road network buffer of each school. Retailers and advertisement sets were categorised as healthy or unhealthy according to a NOVA-based classification. Associations between school characteristics and retailers or advertisement sets were explored using multinomial regression models.
METHODS: Greater Tunis, Tunisia.
METHODS: Random sample of fifty (thirty-five public and fifteen private) primary schools.
RESULTS: Overall, 3621 food retailers and 2098 advertisement sets were mapped. About two-thirds of retailers and advertisement sets were labelled as unhealthy. Most retailers were traditional corner stores (22 %) and only 6 % were fruit and vegetable markets. The prevailing food group promoted was carbonated and sugar-sweetened beverages (22 %). The proportion of unhealthy retailers was significantly higher in the richest v. poorest areas.
CONCLUSIONS: School neighbourhood food environments included predominantly unhealthy retailers and advertisements. Mapping of LMIC food environments is crucial to document the impact of the nutrition transition on children\'s nutritional status. This will inform policies and interventions to curb the emergent childhood obesity epidemic.

Neighbourhood alcohol availability has been associated with alcohol consumption by children, despite children rarely acquiring alcohol from retailers. This study explores one potential reason for this finding, by evaluating the relationships between neighbourhood alcohol availability and children\'s actual exposure to alcohol marketing.
Wearable cameras and GPS devices were worn by 167 children (aged 11-13 y) over a four-day period. Image and GPS data were linked and compared to known alcohol availability data.
Off-licence retailer availability and ethnicity were positively associated with children\'s exposure to marketing in both residential and school neighbourhoods.
Neighbourhood off-licence alcohol retailers are associated with increased childhood exposure to alcohol marketing.

Background: Leisure time physical activity (LTPA) correlates have been mostly studied in relation to adolescents\' home neighbourhoods, but not so much in relation to the environment of their schools\' neighbourhoods. We sought to investigate how objective environmental measures of the schools\' vicinity are related to adolescents\' self-reported LTPA. Methods: Individual data from the Quebec High School Students Health Survey (QHSSHS) were matched with schools\' socioeconomic indicators, as well as geographic information system-based indicators of their built environments. Self-reported levels of LTPA during the school year were assessed according to intensity, frequency and index of energy expenditure. Associations per gender between covariates and LTPA were estimated using ordinal multilevel regression with multiple imputations. Results: Boys (21% of which were highly active) were more active than girls (16% of which were highly active) (p ≤ 0.01). The incremental variance between schools explained by the contextual variables in the final models was higher among girls (7.8%) than boys (2.8%). The number of parks or green spaces within 750 m around their schools was positively associated with student LTPA in both genders. Conclusions: The promotion of parks around schools seems to be an avenue to be strengthened.