Summary of Findings Obesity has become a difficult problem to control in the United States. American culture is known for unhealthy and supersized meals everywhere in America, that leads to bad nutritional decisions. The relationship between obesity risks relates to the community level risk factors, especially how the society is built and social activities work inside communities and across racial ethnic groups. According to Kirby (2012) Obesity is related to race and place “The US obesity epidemic has disproportionately affected certain racial and ethnic minority groups” (Kirby, 2012,p.3) About 50% of African American women are overweight compared with only 33% of white women. (Kirby, 2012).
Problems Associated with Race, Place, and Obesity
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The dominance of obesity has escalated over the past few decades. Now obesity is the most public health problem in the United States. More than one-third of adults over the age of 20 are overweight (Kirby, 2012). Kirby posted that “ Obesity and sedentary lifestyle are risk factors for a variety of chronic conditions and are leading causes of premature mortality and years of life lost” (p.3). According to Kirby (2012) obesity is expensive to treat. The researchers discovered that the yearly medical cost is almost 10% of the whole medical budget, the public health spent $147 billion in 2008 on obesity alone (Kirby, 2008). Results show that African American percentage of being obese was 36.1% followed by Hispanics 28.7% and white was 24.5%. The outcomes are steady with the studies done before, also the results showed correlation with obesity and racial/ethnicity community characteristics. (Kirby,