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Abstract
African American women have the highest prevalence rates of overweight and obesity of any ethnic group. The comorbidities of obesity result in increasing health disparities and higher mortality rates. Oftentimes, pre-existing health conditions prevent many African American women from being successful in certain forms of moderate physical activity. This study examines lifestyle changes in a group of 42 women, 64.3% of whom were obese, 23.8% were glucose impaired or diabetic, 35.7% were pre-hypertensive, and 35.7% were hypertensive. The intervention was 12 weeks of personal fitness training, six months of nutrition education and food demonstrations, and six months of motivational coaching. Using a pretest/posttest quasi-experimental method, the researcher compared outcome measures of the experimental group of 22 women participating in the Sisters Together program to those of the control group of 20 women. Unlike the control group, the experimental group reported significant positive movement in their intent to increase physical activity and fruit/vegetable intake, increase in fruit consumption, positive changes in cooking behavior, and decline in systolic blood pressure. This group also maintained desirable ranges for vegetable intake, total cholesterol, LDL, HDL, TRIG, and optimal range for LDL throughout the intervention period. Little change was seen in weight and BMI. Unfortunately, at the 12-month follow-up, some intervention outcome measures began to deteriorate (LDLs, fruit intake). The attrition rate was 8.7%.
