The Intersection of Environment and Expression Posted on January 20, 2009 Dr. José Szapocznik believes that an integrated view of addictions can lead to health impacts.

We are in an era where there is a lot of discussion about the role of environment in shaping behavior and a lot of discussion about the role of genes in shaping behavior. But really the most interesting area is the way they intersect.

There are folks who say, "Well if we can only find the genes, then we, in proteomics we can look at the proteins that are expressed, and we can target those proteins," and that's true. But on the other hand, if we could only make people more physically active we would also have a population impact.

So it's a medical versus a public health perspective. Having a population impact is not about convincing people that you have to do more physical activity; that's not what it's about. It's about creating environments that makes it happen.

It's like what we've done with cigarette smoking. It's about increasing the price of cigarettes so that they're less available and about decreasing the places where people can smoke. And so that with other interventions that are more individualized has had a great impact.

But ultimately to deal with the obesity epidemic, we have to in some structural way change the accessibility to food, as Mayor Bloomberg has done in New York with trans fat, and we have to change the neighborhoods in which we live.