October 16, 2018
Congratulations to Dr. Karen Florez, AHD Cohort 6, for receiving an R21 from NIDDK.
Project Summary: The prevalence of Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM) is two to three times greater among Mexican Americans than non-Latino whites, and Mexican Americans are more likely to develop T2DM at younger ages and suffer higher rates of complications. Many of these complications could be reduced substantially by targeting health behaviors such as diet and exercise; however, research has shown that, for Mexican Americans, healthful diet-related behaviors decrease with greater acculturation. On the other hand, leisure-time physical activity seems to increase by acculturation-proxies such as more years in the U.S. or English-language adoption. The mechanism accounting for the different association between acculturation and diabetes-related health behaviors has not been fully explored and is not well-understood. Social networks might be such mechanism as they are known to play an important role in obesity, diet, and physical activity through social support, access to resources, social engagement, and social norms. The goal of this project is to examine the influence of the personal social networks of Mexican American adults on diabetes-related health behaviors by drawing on a conceptual framework that conceives acculturation as a two-level phenomenon involving the group and the individual. This project will build on our ongoing collaborations with 2 large Catholic churches in Los Angeles and New York; we will explore group differences in social networks between Spanish-dominant and English-dominant Mexican-American adults attending Sunday services at large Catholic churches. We will then select information-rich cases for in-depth interviews and ethnographic observations, which will allow us to gain insights into diabetes-related behaviors and values that may be socially transmitted. This study will provide preliminary data for an R01 application that will develop and test a church-based intervention that focuses on the most influential network members for diabetes-related health behaviors across the acculturation continuum. These findings will provide critical information about the social context of T2DM prevention in this population, which can then be harnessed to develop interventions that can be tailored across the entire acculturation spectrum.