Meetings and Workshops 2008

On August 18-19, 2008, AACORN hosted its 3rd Invited Workshop. The workshop entitled: Diversity within African American Communities: Implications for Advancing Research on Weight Issues and Related Disparities focused on introducing the important issue of diversity among African Americans into the dialogue. Understanding how African Americans differ in their experiences of health and disease related to nutrition, physical activity and weight related health issues across the life course is essential for improving research to improve health and eliminate disparities affecting African Americans.

Specific workshop objectives included:

• Raising awareness among scholars who conduct nutrition, physical activity and obesity research (both observational studies and interventions) in African Americans to indicate when it is critical to take into account variation by age (e.g., chronological age, developmental stage, and generation), socioeconomic status indices, nativity or sub-ethnicity, residence area, and health status;
• Identifying methodological approaches and gaps for assessing key aspects of variation among African Americans in the content areas of interest; and
• Developing recommendations for both researchers and research policy makers (e.g., funding agencies) as to how study designs and analytic approaches can be formulated to improve the ability to understand variation where it is most important related to the content areas of interest.

The workshop sessions examined:

• Socioeconomic status and obesity among Blacks
• Obesity and obesity-related disparities across the life course
• Addressing environmental influences on obesity in African Americans
• Current trends in obesity-related policies and their implications

AACORN gratefully acknowledges our sponsorship for this workshop:

• The Directors for Health Promotion and Education, which is funded by the Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity and Obesity at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
• A five-year research grant to AACORN from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
• Penn Center for Population Health and Health Disparities
• The Penn Minority Aging Research for Community Health (MARCH) Center
• Penn Center of Excellence for research to advance Community (PCEC) Health, which is funded by the *National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities at the National Institutes of Health
  

*Funding for this conference was made possible (in part) by P60MD000209-05 from the National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities.The views expressed in written conference materials or publications and by speakers and moderators do not necessarily reflect the official policies of the Department of Health and Human Services; nor does mention by trade names, commercial practices, or organizations imply endorsement by the U.S. Government.

Click to download the workshop proceedings (PDF format).