title: Mind the gap: race/ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in obesity.
abstract: Race/ethnic and socioeconomic status (SES) disparities in obesity are substantial and may widen in the future. We review nine potential mechanisms that recent research has used to explain obesity disparities. Those nine mechanisms fall into three broad groups-health behaviors, biological factors, and the social environment-which incorporate both proximate and upstream determinants of obesity disparities. Efforts to reduce the prevalence of obesity in the US population and to close race/ethnic and SES disparities in obesity will likely require the use of multifaceted interventions that target multiple mechanisms simultaneously. Unfortunately, relatively few of the mechanisms reviewed herein have been tested in an intervention framework.
authors.affiliation: Department of Health and Behavioral Sciences, University of Colorado Denver | Anschutz Medical Campus, Administration Building, 1201 5th Street, Denver, CO, 80217, USA. Patrick.Krueger@ucdenver.edu.
authors.forename: Patrick M
authors.initials: PM
authors.lastname: Krueger
authors.affiliation: Department of Sociology and the Yun Kim Population Research Laboratory, Utah State University, 0730 Old Main Hill, Logan, UT, 84322, USA. Eric.Reither@usu.edu.
authors.forename: Eric N
authors.initials: EN
authors.lastname: Reither
mesh_terms: D015992:Body Mass Index; D015438:Health Behavior; D054624:Health Status Disparities; D006801:Humans; D009765:Obesity / Q000453:epidemiology*; D015995:Prevalence; D012923:Social Class
keywords: Body mass index; Disparities; Obesity; Overweight; Race/ethnicity; Socioeconomic status