Tailoring a Lifestyle Intervention to Address Obesity Disparities Among Men
Condition: Weight Loss; Obesity
MeSH terms: Obesity; Weight Loss
Study type: Interventional

Summary: 
      If the investigators are to adequately address the health needs of African American and
      Latino men, both culture and gender must be considered when developing and implementing
      strategies to encourage weight loss and increase their healthy eating and physical
      activity.The aim of this project is to develop and test gendered, culturally and contextually
      relevant messages that will be used in a future, web- based tailored intervention to
      encourage healthy eating and physical activity in African American and Latino men. This study
      is part of a larger research agenda that for a decade has focused on understanding and
      reducing chronic disease risk among African American and Latino men. Because men are more
      likely than women to engage in over 30 behaviors known to increase their risk of injury,
      morbidity, and mortality, improving men's health requires understanding the social and
      cultural factors that help explain sex differences in health. Operationalizing gender in
      individually-tailored health communications has great potential to unlock the potential of
      health communications and interventions to engage and improve the health of men and
      particularly African American and Latino men. To date, no community-based intervention has
      produced clinically significant improvements in weight loss, healthy eating or physical
      activity in Latino and African American men. It also is unclear how technology can be used to
      promote these behaviors in this population. Thus, there is a need to develop healthy eating,
      physical activity and weight loss interventions specifically targeted and tailored to African
      American and Latino men that explores the utility of technology. This intervention content
      and focus represents a novel strategy to promote health equity by using technology-based
      health care innovations to improve healthy eating and active living by addressing a root
      cause of unhealthy behavior in men: notions of manhood. The investigators focus on gender and
      manhood because they are under-explored factors that shape men's health behaviors.
    

Detailed description: 
      The overall aim of this study is to develop and pilot an individualized weight-loss
      intervention for obese middle-aged African American and Latino men and to explore how the
      genetically predicted BMI relates to outcomes. Using strategies previously employed by the PI
      to develop individually-tailored materials for African American men, the proposed study is
      designed to develop person-specific materials for Latino men (Specific Aim 1). Investigators
      also will pilot a behavioral weight loss intervention for 35-64 year old African American men
      in Nashville and Latino men in Miami (Specific Aims 2-3), and explore how the phenotypic
      expression of obesity shapes and is affected by behavioral and physiological changes
      (Specific Aim 4). The proposed intervention includes (a) person-specific goals/ messages (via
      web and text), (b) self-monitoring (via wearable device and text), (c) small group training
      and education (including social support) and (d) educational and community-based information
      and resources (via web and text).
    

Intervention name(s): Tailor Made: Solutions for your health (A su Medida: Soluciones para su salud)
Intervention type(s): Behavioral
Intervention description(s): Assess the effectiveness of a person-specific, randomized controlled pilot weight loss study of 80 African American and 40 Latino men; to compare changes in chronic disease risk behaviors (e.g., diet and physical activity), adiposity measures (e.g., body fat), and psychosocial mediators (e.g., social support, autonomous motivation) between data collected at baseline and at 3-months.
Allocation: Randomized
Intervention model: Parallel Assignment
Masking: None (Open Label)
Primary purpose: Treatment
Keywords: Men's Health; weight loss; African American men; Latino men