Multi-dimensional Profiles of Risk and Their Association with Obesity-Severity in Low-Income Black Women

Multi-level risk factors underlie disproportionate obesity rates among Black women. Latent class analysis of multi-level risk and protective factors among low-income Black women (n = 917) in 2011 (Pittsburgh, PA). Data were collected via in-person survey, interviewer-assisted online dietary recalls, and from 2011 crime records. Multinomial logistic regression estimated cross-sectional associations between latent classes and obesity severity derived from measured anthropometry. Latent class analysis identified four groups of women according to their motivations and intentions to be healthy, socioeconomic and health burden, and neighborhood risk: Class 1 = Very high burden (n = 283), Class 2 = Health motivated, low burden, low neighborhood risk (n = 231), Class 3 = High burden and high neighborhood risk (n = 106), and Class 4 = Low burden and low neighborhood risk (n = 297). Class 3 = High burden and high neighborhood risk women had the highest severe obesity risk. Multi-level strategies may support low-income Black women women's resilience to obesity who face neighborhood-level and socioeconomic stressors.