Abstract 18248: Physical Activity and Nutrition Self-Efficacy Associates With Perceived Everyday Discrimination in African American Women: The Step It Up Physical Activity Intervention
Foster Osei Baah, Yvonne Baumer, Hannatu Tarfa, Ayushi Dave, Mario Pita, Manny Cintron, Lola Ortiz-Whittingham, Sandy Reynolds, Fnu Abhinav Saurabh, Potharaju Kameswari, Andrew Baez, Keitra Thompson, Colby Ayers, Sam Neally, Kaveri Curlin, Nithya Vijayakumar, Valerie Mitchell, Ayanna Wells, Marie Marah, Billy Collins, Tonya Dodge, Gwenyth Wallen, Tiffany M Powell-Wiley- Physiology (medical)
- Cardiology and Cardiovascular Medicine
Background: Increased self-efficacy facilitates health promoting behaviors such as physical activity (PA). Perceived discrimination may limit PA among minoritized populations, but little is known about the relationship between PA and nutrition self-efficacy (PANSE) and perceived discrimination (PD) among African American (AA) women with overweight/obesity.
Methods: We examined the associations between PANSE and PD in 106 AA women in the Step It Up, a community-engaged, digital health intervention. All completed the PANSE (higher scores = higher self-efficacy), the everyday discrimination scale (higher scores = higher frequency of everyday discrimination), and a sociodemographic survey. We used linear regression to assess the associations between PANSE and PD adjusting for covariates and the interaction effects of discrimination and income.
Results: The participants had a mean age of 55.9 (SD±12.7) years with mean BMI 36.3 (SD±6.9) kg/m2. PD was negative and significantly associated with PANSE in both our unadjusted model and after adjusting for age and educational level (Table 1). The association trended marginally significant in the third model when we adjusted for income. We found no interaction effect between PD and income.
Conclusion: PD is associated with PANSE among this AA women cohort. This suggests an urgent need for future research to better extricate the relationship between PD and PANSE to inform interventions that addresses everyday discrimination among diverse population groups; particularly in AA women with overweight/obesity.