Social Network Analysis
In 2015, RHCP completed the Healthy Immigrant Families (HIF) project, a community–academic partnership in which an intervention was co-created and delivered in participants’ homes by bilingual interventionists to 44 Hispanic, Somali, and Sudanese families. The intervention resulted in significant improvements in dietary quality among adults in the intervention group compared with controls. Notably, dietary improvements were also observed in the control group, suggesting the influence of a “hidden” social network effect commonly seen in behavior change interventions. These findings directly informed the development of the Healthy Immigrant Community (HIC) project, which aims to leverage existing social connections to implement a social network–based intervention to improve dietary behaviors among overweight and obese immigrant adults in Rochester, Minnesota.
The first phase of HIC involved a social network analysis (SNA) to identify community peer interventionists and examine social structures influencing health behaviors among Hispanic and Somali adults at risk for cardiovascular disease. RHCP partners completed 1,344 surveys (653 Hispanic and 691 Somali) to identify opinion leaders who could serve as interventionists and to assess associations between network characteristics and dietary behaviors. These data informed the design of a peer-delivered social network intervention targeting dietary improvement and reductions in body mass index (BMI) among overweight and obese adults. Study findings were disseminated community-wide through an event at Rochester STEM Academy, and results confirmed that obesity clusters within social networks in these communities.
Publications
Social Networks and Obesity Among Somali Immigrants and Refugees
Funding
Mayo Clinic: Office of Health Disparities Research
National Institutes of Health: National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (R01 HL 111407)