Communication Resources for Obesity Prevention Among African American and Latino Residents in an Urban Neighborhood

Abstract

African Americans and Latinos are at disproportionately high risk for obesity and for the chronic conditions and diseases associated with it. This study uses communication infrastructure theory to explore how connections to neighborhood communication resources and communication with family members can affect residents’ regular exercise and healthy eating behaviors—two of the most direct strategies for achieving or maintaining a healthy weight. Regression analyses revealed that connections to the neighborhood storytelling network and family interaction predicted residents’ regular exercise and that family interaction had the strongest effect on the likelihood of exercising regularly. Family interaction was the only independent variable that predicted residents’ daily intake of fruits and vegetables. Implications of these findings for community health programs and theory development are discussed.

Acknowledgments

This article has been developed within the broader context of the Metamorphosis Project, part of the Communication Technology and Community Program at the USC Annenberg School for Communication. More information about the project is available at www.metamorph.org.

Notes

¹The U.S. Census uses “Hispanic” to indicate ethnicity, regardless of race. “Latino” and Hispanic are often used interchangeably; Latino tends to be favored as a self-referent, so we use this term unless citing research where the authors did not. For example, this Office of Minority Health study specifically discusses Mexican-origin women.

²While eating together does not necessitate eating healthfully (e.g., families may be eating fast food or frozen pizza together), we created a version of the family interaction index that did not include this item. This alternative version of FII was still significantly related to consuming more fruits and vegetables. Therefore, we kept the item and used the original FII measure for consistency with previous research.

³We also created a version of FII that did not include this item due to its conceptual overlap with the dependent variables. The results for all analyses were similar with both versions of FII. We therefore opted to use the measure as computed in prior research.

⁴Respondents who indicated both ethnicities (n = 9) were excluded from analyses to avoid their inclusion in both groups.

⁵Analyses were initially conducted for each independent variable, gender/race, and interaction term separately. It was determined there were no significant interactions. Then the analyses were repeated including all variables (including covariates, other independent variables and other interaction terms) in the equation. We report the results from the analysis including all variables. We also explored the potential for an interaction between the independent variables (ISCN*FII) and each dependent variable. The interaction was not a significant predictor in either case.

⁶Women, Infants and Children, or WIC, is a federally funded program providing pre- and postnatal nutritional and medical resources to women and infants. WIC's success in reaching low-income women is partly due to their practice of hiring women who are themselves residents of those communities (Katz, 2014).