The high and above-average prevalence of obesity and severe obesity among black children and adults persists, and obesity prevalence is still increasing in some age and gender subgroups in the black population. Current treatments don’t seem to work as well to reduce weight in blacks compared to whites (at least based on studies in adults), although some show promise for reduction of CVD risk factors even with modest weight loss. Preventive interventions are urgently needed but underdeveloped.

The context and process of intervening on weight issues differs by cultural and socioeconomic contexts. Yet, research that specifically focuses on approaches that can be effective in black population subgroups in communities at large is sparse; many studies are small, with methodological limitations. Within the overall research effort to address obesity, more studies, better studies, and coordinated studies on black Americans as a high risk sub-population could move the needle. This could be a general need related to high-risk populations who will never be the mainstream research focus and may have different contexts and needs.

It is feasible to do this if the challenges can be overcome and appropriate funding mechanisms are provided. The typical funding mechanisms focus on investigators rather than on populations and on disconnected R01s. The likelihood that these will add up to tell a coherent story is low. More mechanisms are needed to support coordinated studies planned to have collective impact for the black (or other) population. Other challenges are to improve methodological quality (including design, measurements, and duration), phase studies so that they can build on each other, and standardize process and outcome assessments to improve the ability to synthesize study results.

To say the least, not all researchers of color study disparities related issues and not all disparities research is done by researchers of color. That is the way it should be. However, I suspect that research focusing on populations of color would attract a greater than average proportion of researchers of color (NIMHD might have data on this but NIMHD funding alone would be grossly insufficient as the only relevant funding stream. It would also be inappropriate and ineffective to silo the entire burden as an NIMHD responsibility).

The infrastructure for such training might not exist. Isolated minority researchers attached to various centers and programs would not necessarily work; some sort of networking would have to be done based on an infrastructure devoted to population-oriented obesity research and with a critical mass of obesity researchers focusing on the black (or other) population..

Decisions regarding public health programming, education, and resources are based on an assumed understanding of cardiometabolic health/risk in Asian American populations rather than on existing, high quality, epidemiologic evidence. Addressing this CQ would provide necessary surveillance/monitoring information for appropriate targeting of resources and it would point to important contextual or individual level determinants to be targeted for programming or intervention.

This CQ is entirely feasible using established epidemiologic methods although new recruitment methodologies might be necessary to reach broad, population-based samples. The primary obstacle is in recognizing this as a significant public health issue.

High impact, given that in the U.S.: a) Asian Americans are the fastest growing racial/ethnic group, and b) heart diseases and chronic lower respiratory diseases are the second and fourth leading causes of death, respectively, among Asian Americans

Genetic and genomic technologies are currently available for such a study.
Although there is a growing number of genetic studies in Asian countries such as China, the research findings are not necessarily generalizable to Asian Americans, who differ in various ‘exposure variables’ including diet, behaviors, and environment. Furthermore, there is a need to conduct research among Asian American subgroups (see list immediately below) rather than lumping them into a single category, given the heterogeneity across subgroups. Sufficient sample sizes are needed to provide reliable estimates of gene-by-environment interactions; however, Asian Americans are often underrepresented in research studies in the U.S. Asian American subgroups, in order of highest to lowest % in the U.S.: Chinese; South Asians (ancestry from Indian subcontinent), Filipino, Vietnamese, Korean, and Japanese.