Obesity-Related Health Lifestyles of Late-Middle Age Black Americans: The Jackson Heart Study

This article examines the obesity-related health lifestyle practices of a late-middle age cohort of socioeconomically diverse Black Americans. Black people have the highest prevalence of obesity of any racial group in the U.S. Consequently, the obesity-related health lifestyles of this population is an important topic of investigation, including those in late-middle age for whom there is little data.

This study employs latent class analysis (LCA) and multinomial logit models to investigate dietary habits, levels of exercise, alcohol use, and smoking. The analysis sample is from the first examination of the Jackson Heart Study (2000‒2004) analyzed in 2021 using LCA. The sample consists of 739 Black men and 1,351 women between the ages of 50 and 64 years.

Three classes of lifestyles were found for both genders: healthy diet, unhealthy diet, and unhealthy smokers. For women only, a most healthy lifestyle was added. Major findings are the low levels of physical activity, a clear socioeconomic pattern in healthy lifestyles among Black men and women, and the association of diagnoses of diabetes and cardiovascular disease with healthier lifestyle practices among Black men but not among women.

Obesity-related health lifestyles among late-middle aged Black Americans generally do not converge toward a healthier norm with impending old age. An exception is men who have been diagnosed as having diabetes or heart disease. Otherwise, healthy and unhealthy lifestyle practices remain aligned by social class during this period of the life course.