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Community and Family Perspectives on Addressing Overweight in Urban, African-American Youth

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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.

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Acknowledgments

This project was supported by grant P60 DK20595 from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases of the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD to the Diabetes Research and Training Center at the University of Chicago, NIH Pilot and Feasibility Grant DK020595 through the University of Chicago’s Section of Endocrinology, and Pilot and Feasibility Grant DK42086 through the Section of Gastroenterology. Ms. Ossowski was supported by NIH grant 5T35GMO8140-15 while in the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine Summer Research Program. Dr. Burnet’s research is supported by an NIH career development award K23 DK064073-01. Dr. Chin is supported by a Midcareer Investigator Award in Patient-Oriented Research from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases K24 DK071933 and was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Generalist Physician Faculty Scholar.

Conflict of Interest Statement

None disclosed.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Medicine, MC2007, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

    Deborah L. Burnet MD, MA, Michael T. Quinn PhD, Rita Gorawara-Bhat PhD & Marshall H. Chin MD MPH

  2. Department of Pediatrics, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

    Deborah L. Burnet MD, MA

  3. Chicago School of Medicine, University of Illinois, Chicago, IL, USA

    Andrea J. Plaut MPH

  4. Department of Surgery, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA

    Kathryn Ossowski MD

  5. Department of Radiology, New York University, New York, NY, USA

    Afshan Ahmad MD

  6. Department of Pediatrics, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Sally Radovick MD

Authors
  1. Deborah L. Burnet MD, MA
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  2. Andrea J. Plaut MPH
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  3. Kathryn Ossowski MD
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  4. Afshan Ahmad MD
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  5. Michael T. Quinn PhD
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  6. Sally Radovick MD
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  7. Rita Gorawara-Bhat PhD
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  8. Marshall H. Chin MD MPH
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Deborah L. Burnet MD, MA.

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Burnet, D.L., Plaut, A.J., Ossowski, K. et al. Community and Family Perspectives on Addressing Overweight in Urban, African-American Youth. J GEN INTERN MED 23, 175–179 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-007-0469-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-007-0469-9

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