Social context may be a better indicator of obesity disparities than race

Friday, May 7, 2010 - 07:31 in Psychology & Sociology

When analysing obesity disparities among women, socioeconomic status and social context may be more important than race, according to a study by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's Hopkins Centre for Health Disparities Solutions. The authors examined race disparities in obesity among black and white women living in the same social context with similar income and compared these estimates to national data. Nationwide, black women were twice as likely to be obese when compared to white women. However, the researchers found that obesity rates were comparable in a sample of white and black women living in similar social and environmental conditions. The results are featured in the May 2010 issue of the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health...

Read the whole article on

More from

Latest Science Newsletter

Get the latest and most popular science news articles of the week in your Inbox! It's free!

Check out our next project, Biology.Net