We have a poor understanding of obesity and chronic disease among different subgroups within a minority population (e.g., between different groups of Asians, Black Americans or Latinos). This initiative includes two strands of research: the first aims at theory building and the identification of novel intervention levers by employing group model building (a system dynamics technique) to develop complex systems maps of the sociocultural ecosystem of childhood obesity in specific ethnic communities. See here for an example of a recent workshop in Manhattan Chinatown. The second strand of research focuses on secondary data analysis of large public domain datasets that allow us to investigate trends in obesity and chronic disease among intra-ethnic subgroups. For example, we have found that foreign-born blacks are at reduced risk for obesity but higher risk for type 2 diabetes (even at lower BMI) compared to US-born blacks, even though public health studies tend to cluster all Blacks into one group. Similarly, we are exploring differences among different Asian and Latino subgroups.
Principal Investigators: Terry Huang
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