Publication Type: Poster
Abstract: Participants observed overweight or underweight exercisers, reproduced the exercises, and completed measures of self-objectification, state self-esteem, and current and ideal body silhouettes. No significant differences between groups were observed. A follow-up with a better control condition is underway, and results should be available by March. Implications for future research will be discussed.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: High rates of adolescent obesity have become a national public health concern and are an important research topic in medical sociology and epidemiology. Adolescent obesity is an important health concern because of the long-term consequences of adolescent obesity which is a strong predictor of adult obesity and its resultant higher rates of coronary hearth disease, Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and mortality.
We used data from the 2003 National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH) which was a multistage cluster design sample of children less than 18 years of age selected from each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The NSCH was conducted from January 2003 to July 2004. We look at two categories of being at risk of overweight and overweight. We run separate logistic analyses by gender in which we first enter demographics of race/ethnicity and age, then family background characteristics, then residence, then family socialization such as mother’s exercise, health, and smoking in the family and then behavior of the adolescent such as computer hours, TV hours, reading and participation in exercise and sports teams. African American youth have higher rates of both categories in almost all models and youth from better educated families also have lower rates in almost all models. Patterns vary for boys and girls and for at risk of overweight versus overweight. Boys’ weight status is more strongly linked to family structure and socialization than girl’s and family structure and mother’s exercise have opposite effects on boys than girls. Adolescent activities also have different influences on boys and girls overweight status.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Recent years have witnessed an explosion of news reporting on the so-called obesity epidemic, while news reports of anorexia have remained relatively constant. To evaluate the implications of this shift in media focus, we compare news reports on overweight with reporting on eating disorders. Analyses of a systematic sample of 332 news articles suggest that overweight is portrayed as an urgent public health crisis that, although most common among the poor and ethnic minorities, threatens the white middle class. Indeed, public concern over obesity, we argue, is informed by worries about class reproduction. In the case of overweight, news reports focus blame on individuals or, in the case of children, their mothers and hold them responsible for losing weight. In contrast, eating disorders are described as mental health problems of young, white, middle class women and girls, for which “no-one is to blame.” While the (often poor and minority) overweight and their parents are villainized, (young white middle-class female) sufferers of eating disorders are portrayed as victims. That larger female bodies are prized in African-American subculture is cited as protecting against eating disorders but is partially blamed for overweight, suggesting that the shift in media attention to overweight serves to cast African-American subculture in a more negative light.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This study assessed the association between socioeconomic status (SES) and overweight and obesity and the underlying mechanism among the near elderly (aged 53-69) and the elderly (age 70+), using a longitudinal survey data in Taiwan. Multivariate OLS regression models showed that mainlander status and current income were positively associated with body mass index (BMI) among elderly and near elderly men, respectively. In contrast, SES was not related to BMI among elderly women, while education was inversely associated with BMI among near elderly women. The associations between SES and BMI remained similar after controlling for health behaviors and social support. Despite the modest association between SES and overweight and obesity among this older population, the changing pattern in the SES-obesity links between near elderly and elderly women documented the emerging social disparity in overweight and obesity in Taiwan. The findings suggested that social patterning in overweight and obesity is conditioned upon socioeconomic and cultural contexts.

Supporting Publications:
Supporting Document

Publication Type: Abstract
Abstract: Abstract

There is much debate about whether being overweight is a serious concern of the health among American people recently. Up to the end of 1990s the general conclusion is the relationship between Body Mass Index (BMI) and mortality rate from all reasons is in a concave shape where the highest and lowest mortality rates are observed among people in the lowest and highest BMI level, and the optimal weight associated with lowest mortality rate was determined to be between 23.5 to 24.9 in men, and between 22.0 and 23.4 in women.

However, there has been much debate recently concerning the health risk related to obesity. The center of the debate is the publication on JAMA (Flegal et al.. ,2005 ) This study shows that the relative risk of death among obese people with BMI 30 or higher is significantly higher than the normal weight people (BMI 18.5 to 25), but the relative risk of death of overweight people with BMI between 25 and 30 is the same as the normal weight people. Other researchers questioned the results and methods of Flegal’s research, and specifically pointed out that the relationship between BMI and mortality is complicated with smoking, chronic diseases and natural aging process which involves loss of bone density and muscularity, and calls for longitudinal behavior research that could investigate the changes in weight, health care behaviors and health outcomes.

This study used a dynamic behavior model to explain that weight is a choice variable of each individual that relates to her health status, health care services consumption, personal habit, and life expectancy. At the same time, weight itself changes over time in a dynamic pattern.

A jointly estimated equation system is then developed based on the theoretical framework to estimate different aspects of dynamic changes of weight and health conditions. Longitudinal data of Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey from 1992 to 1998 was used in the empirical estimation. Discrete random error term was adopted in the maximum likelihood estimation to control for unobserved individual heterogeneity. Both a short-term simulation over the entire sample over 5 year, and a long-term simulation over 35 years on one cohort from 65 were conducted. The results showed that the econometric tools adopted in this study significantly controlled the possible estimation bias caused by unobserved individual heterogeneity. The highest mortality rate is observed among the obese and underweight cohort. The elderly who are overweight does experience higher mortality than the normal weight cohort. Survivors in all age of both the obese and overweight cohort have higher disability rate than the normal weight group. The average weight among the survivors in all age cohorts converge to BMI 24 over time. The obese cohort experienced the worse health outcomes, but highest health care expenditures in total, while the normal weight cohort have the best health and lowest health care expenditures. The optimal weight for the elderly is still suggested to be lower than, and close to 25 up to age 65 in this study.