Dataset Information

Community and family perspectives on addressing overweight in urban, African-American youth.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

To assess weight-related beliefs and concerns of overweight urban, African-American children, their parents, and community leaders before developing a family-based intervention to reduce childhood overweight and diabetes risk.

Design

We conducted 13 focus groups with overweight children and their parents and eight semistructured interviews with community leaders.

Participants and setting

Focus group participants (N = 67) from Chicago's South Side were recruited through flyers in community sites. Interview participants (N = 9) were recruited to sample perspectives from health, fitness, education, civics, and faith leaders.

Results

Community leaders felt awareness was higher for acute health conditions than for obesity. Parents were concerned about their children's health, but felt stressed by competing priorities and constrained by lack of knowledge, parenting skills, time, and financial resources. Parents defined overweight in functional terms, whereas children relied upon physical appearances. Children perceived negative social consequences of overweight. Parents and children expressed interest in family-based interventions to improve nutrition and physical activity and offered suggestions for making programs interesting.

Conclusions

This study provides insights into the perspectives of urban, African-American overweight children, their parents, and community leaders regarding nutrition and physical activity. The specific beliefs of these respondents can become potential leverage points in interventions.

SUBMITTER: Burnet DL

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2359171 | biostudies-literature | 2008 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

Community and family perspectives on addressing overweight in urban, African-American youth.

Burnet Deborah L DL Plaut Andrea J AJ Ossowski Kathryn K Ahmad Afshan A Quinn Michael T MT Radovick Sally S Gorawara-Bhat Rita R Chin Marshall H MH

Journal of general internal medicine 20071211 2

<h4>Objective</h4>To assess weight-related beliefs and concerns of overweight urban, African-American children, their parents, and community leaders before developing a family-based intervention to reduce childhood overweight and diabetes risk.<h4>Design</h4>We conducted 13 focus groups with overweight children and their parents and eight semistructured interviews with community leaders.<h4>Participants and setting</h4>Focus group participants (N = 67) from Chicago's South Side were recruited th ...[more]

PMID: 18071829

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Project description:BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVE:Family relationships have been linked to obesity and related disorders in youth, but few studies have provided causal evidence of this association. This study tested the impact of a family psychosocial intervention on components of metabolic syndrome-a condition driven largely by abdominal obesity-in African American youth. In particular, the study tested whether effects were strongest among those who started at highest risk, that is, with high levels of unsupportive parenting at baseline. SUBJECTS/METHODS:Randomized clinical trial of a community sample of 391 African American youth (mean age=11.2 years) conducted in 2001-2002, with follow-up metabolic syndrome assessment in 2014-2015. Participants were assigned either to receive a weekly family intervention or to a control group. The primary study outcome was the number of components of metabolic syndrome that were clinically elevated at age 25, including central adiposity, blood pressure, triglycerides, glucose and low high-density lipoproteins. Unsupportive parenting was measured by questionnaires at baseline. RESULTS:Significant interaction effects were found between group assignment and baseline unsupportive parenting on counts of metabolic syndrome components in youth (beta=-0.17, P=0.03). Among those who started with higher levels of unsupportive parenting at age 11, participation in the family intervention reduced the number of clinically elevated components of the metabolic syndrome at age 25 relative to the control group. No such effect was seen among those who started with good parenting. Mediation analyses suggested that changes in the psychosocial targets of the parenting intervention partially accounted for the effects amongst those high in unsupportive parenting at baseline (effect size=-0.350, s.e.=0.178). CONCLUSIONS:These findings suggest that efforts to improve family relationships may be able to ameliorate the detrimental effects that harsh and unsupportive parenting have on obesity-related outcomes such as metabolic syndrome in youth.

Dataset Information

Community and family perspectives on addressing overweight in urban, African-American youth.

Objective

Design

Participants and setting

Results

Conclusions

Publications

Community and family perspectives on addressing overweight in urban, African-American youth.

Similar Datasets

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