Publications

Obesity and poor dietary habits are a significant health problem for children from economically and socially disadvantaged backgrounds. In the USA, children from minority and low-income backgrounds face substantially greater environmental challenges to engage in healthy eating and other health behaviors to maintain a healthy weight.

The childhood obesity epidemic includes well documented health and psychosocial comorbidities that affect 17% of children in the United States. Previous research has demonstrated that children and adolescents from minority and low income backgrounds face substantially greater social and environmental challenges to engage in physical activity and healthy eating to maintain a healthy weight.

In the midst of a well-documented obesity epidemic in the United States, Hispanic adults are 1.2 times more likely to be obese than non-Hispanic whites, representing the highest age-adjusted obesity prevalence in the country.

Somali immigrants and refugees to the United States are at high risk for obesity and related cardiovascular risk. Social network factors influence health behaviors and are important contributors to the obesity epidemic.

Prevalence and consequences of obesity and sedentary lifestyle are well-documented public health concerns for youth in the United State of America (USA) that disproportionally affect children from low income and minority families.

Populations that immigrate to high-income nations generally have less healthy behaviors than the nonimmigrant majority populations.

Immigrants experience an escalation of negative health behaviors after arrival to the United States.

Lack of treatment fidelity can be an important source of variation affecting the credibility and utility of outcomes from behavioral intervention research.

US immigrants often have escalating cardiovascular risk. Barriers to optimal physical activity and diet have a significant role in this risk accumulation.

Immigrants and refugees to the United States exhibit lower dietary quality than the general population, but reasons for this disparity are poorly understood.

Immigrants and refugees to the United States exhibit relatively low levels of physical activity, but reasons for this disparity are poorly understood.

Immigrants and refugees arrive to the United States healthier than the general population, but this advantage declines with increasing duration of residence.

Immigrant and refugee populations arrive to the U.S. healthier than the general population, but the longer they reside, the more they approximate the cardiovascular risk profiles of the country.