Socio-Cultural and Environmental Factors that Influence Weight-Related Behaviors: Focus Group Results from African-American Girls and Their Mothers

Daheia J. Barr-Anderson, Alexis W. Adams-Wynn, Olubunmi Orekoya and Sofiya Alhassan
Additional contact information
Daheia J. Barr-Anderson: School of Kinesiology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA
Alexis W. Adams-Wynn: Detroit Health Department, Detroit, MI 48207, USA
Olubunmi Orekoya: Metropolitan Hospital Center, New York, NY, 10029 USA
Sofiya Alhassan: Department of Kinesiology, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, MA 01003, USA

IJERPH, 2018, vol. 15, issue 7, 1-12

Abstract: African-American girls experience higher rates of obesity than other youth and are more likely to live in environments that may inhibit healthy lifestyles. Focus groups with African-American girls (14.2 ± 2.36 years) and their mothers were conducted to explore socio-cultural and physical factors within the home, neighborhood, and school environments that influence physical activity (PA) and food choices (i.e., availability and accessibility). Being active at home was dependent on availability of unstructured PA, possibility of activity with family/friends/pet, structured sports in the community, and perceived safety of neighborhood. Girls reported unhealthy foods and excessive snacking as issues at home while citing choice of school meals vs. vending machine items and easy accessibility to fast food restaurants as concerns at school. Learning more about the PA and food environments is a fundamental step to develop effective and innovative, environmental strategies to address unhealthy weight-related behaviors in this population.

Keywords: obesity; physical activity; diet; culturally appropriate (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/15/7/1354/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/15/7/1354/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:15:y:2018:i:7:p:1354-:d:154928

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().