Project Number: 1235-51530-054-04
Project Type: Reimbursable

Start Date: Oct 01, 2009
End Date: Mar 31, 2012

Objective:
To identify Dietary Guidelines adherence barriers and facilitators in children and adults of major U.S. racial ethnic/gender groups and to examine how these as a lifestyle package relate to dietary behavior and body mass index (obesity).

Approach:
Dietary Guidelines (DG) adherence will be modeled as a function of patterns of adherence to the entire set of individual DG. Individuals may vary with respect to their pattern of adherence to different DG and aggregations of individuals may be identified according to their patterns of adherence. Given that different subpopulations are characterized by their adherence profiles, there also may likely be different sets of facilitators and barriers associated with these patterns of adherence. Moreover, different variables (e.g., race/ethnic group, SES, and geographic location) involving different systems or environments may moderate these associations. With this approach, it may be possible to discern the relevant adherence to DG that describes different subgroups and how these relate to different barriers and facilitators in the context of potential moderating influences (e.g., low adherence to DG). In addition, by including BMI as a distal outcome, it may be possible to identify those systems of relations that have translational value for developing intervention components for specifically targeted subpopulations. The target population will be households that include children in grade 5 and their primary caregivers from three race/ethnic groups (African-Americans [AA]), European-Americans [EA], and Hispanic-Americans [HA] across six geographic locations [Beltsville, Maryland; Houston, Texas; Boston, Massachusetts; Sacramento, California; Grand Forks, North Dakota; and the lower Mississippi Delta].