(Press-News.org) When it comes to advising obese patients, blacks receive less weight reduction and exercise counseling from physicians than their white counterparts. This is according to a recent study conducted by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who examined the impact of patient and doctor race concordance on weight-related counseling. The results are featured in the January 2011 online issue of Obesity.
"Contrary to our expectations, we did not observe a positive association between patient-physician race concordance and weight-related counseling," said Sara Bleich, PhD, lead author of the study and an assistant professor with the Bloomberg School's Department of Health Policy and Management. "Rather, black obese patients seeing white doctors were less likely to receive exercise counseling than white obese patients seeing white doctors. We also found that black obese patients seeing black doctors were less likely to receive weight reduction counseling than white obese patients seeing black doctors. This suggests that regardless of the physician's race, black obese patients receive less weight-related counseling than white obese patients. Our findings could be due to a number of factors such as negative physician perspectives towards black patients or a lack of sensitivity to the underlying levels of obesity risk for black patients as compared to white patients."
Obesity is defined as having a body mass index (BMI) greater than or equal to 30 kg/m2 and is an important risk factor for mortality and morbidity. In the U.S., blacks are disproportionately affected by obesity and are at an increased risk for a number of chronic diseases associated with obesity, such as cardiovascular disease, hypertension and diabetes.
Researchers analyzed National Ambulatory Medical Care Surveys (NAMCS) from 2005—2007, a nationally representative cross-sectional survey of physician office visits, among individuals ages 20 years and older. Using a sample size of 2,231 visits of black and white obese patients to their black and white physicians from the specialties of general/family practice and general internal medicine, Bleich and colleagues examined the relationship between doctor-patient race concordance and weight-related counseling (measured as weight reduction, diet/nutrition and exercise counseling). Logistic regression was used to model the outcome variables of interest. In addition, tests were used to statistically compare whether physicians of each race provided counseling at different rates for obese patients of different races.
"Previous studies have shown disparities in the proportion of black obese adults informed by physicians that they were overweight compared to white obese adults," said Lisa Cooper, MD, MPH, senior author of the study and a professor in the Bloomberg School's Department's of Epidemiology and Health, Policy and Management. "We now also see that black patients are receiving different medical counseling as well. Further research is needed to understand how to improve obese patient counseling, particularly among the black population."
INFORMATION:
"Impact of Patient-Doctor Race Concordance on Rates of Weight-Related Counseling in Visits by Black and White Obese Individuals" was written by Sara N. Bleich, Alan E. Simon and Lisa A. Cooper.
The research was supported by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.
Race plays role in weight-related counseling among obese patients
2011-01-14
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
When continents formed
2011-01-14
The continental crust is the principal record of conditions on the Earth for the last 4.4 billion years. Its formation modified the composition of the mantle and the atmosphere, it supports life, and it remains a sink for carbon dioxide through weathering and erosion. The continental crust therefore has had a key role in the evolution of the Earth, and yet the timing of its generation remains the topic of considerable debate.
It is widely believed that the juvenile continental crust has grown from the depleted upper mantle. One common way to assess when new crust was ...
Researchers can predict your video game aptitude by imaging your brain
2011-01-14
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Researchers report that they can predict "with unprecedented accuracy" how well you will do on a complex task such as a strategic video game simply by analyzing activity in a specific region of your brain.
The findings, published in the online journal PLoS ONE, offer detailed insights into the brain structures that facilitate learning, and may lead to the development of training strategies tailored to individual strengths and weaknesses.
The new approach used established brain imaging techniques in a new way. Instead of measuring how brain activity ...
BSE pathogens can be transmitted by air
2011-01-14
Airborne prions are also infectious and can induce mad cow disease or Creutzfeldt-Jakob disorder. This is the surprising conclusion of researchers at the University of Zurich, the University Hospital Zurich and the University of Tübingen. They recommend precautionary measures for scientific labs, slaughterhouses and animal feed plants.
The prion is the infectious agent that caused the epidemic of mad cow disease, also termed bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), and claimed the life of over 280,000 cows in the past decades. Transmission of BSE to humans, e.g. by ...
New predator 'dawn runner' discovered in early dinosaur graveyard
2011-01-14
A team of paleontologists and geologists from Argentina and the United States on Jan. 13 announced the discovery of a lanky dinosaur that roamed South America in search of prey as the age of dinosaurs began, approximately 230 million years ago.
Sporting a long neck and tail and weighing only 10 to 15 pounds, the new dinosaur has been named Eodromaeus, the "dawn runner."
"It really is the earliest look we have at the long line of meat eaters that would ultimately culminate in Tyrannosaurus rex near the end of the dinosaur era," said Paul Sereno, University of Chicago ...
Academics urge universities to change culture to value teaching as highly as research
2011-01-14
Irvine, Calif. — The reward systems at universities heavily favor science, math and engineering research at the expense of teaching, which can and must change. That's the conclusion of UC Irvine biology professor Diane K. O'Dowd and research professors at Harvard University, Yale University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and elsewhere.
Writing in the Jan. 14 issue of Science magazine, the authors note that professors have two responsibilities: to generate new knowledge and to educate students. But, they maintain, "although education and lifelong learning ...
Cardiff scientists make hydrocarbon breakthrough using gold catalyst
2011-01-14
Researchers from Cardiff University are opening up a new way of using hydrocarbon feedstocks to make a range of valuable products.
Hydrocarbons are an extremely important energy resource but, although widely available from fossil fuels, are extremely difficult to activate and require very high temperatures in current industrial processes.
For the first time, the Cardiff study has shown that the primary carbon-hydrogen bonds in toluene, a hydrocarbon widely used as an industrial material, can be activated selectively at low temperatures.
Professor Graham Hutchings ...
Cancer survivors likely to experience pain at some point in care: U-M study shows
2011-01-14
ANN ARBOR, Mich. – Surviving cancer may also mean surviving pain, according to a study by the University of Michigan Health System showing 20 percent of cancer survivors at least two years post diagnosis have current cancer-related chronic pain.
The study, published online ahead of print in the American Cancer Society's journal Cancer, gives new insight on issues in cancer survivorship among the growing number of U.S. cancer survivors.
More than 40 percent of patients surveyed had experienced pain since their diagnosis, and the pain experience was worse for blacks ...
Popular sleep medicine puts older adults at risk for falls, cognitive impairment
2011-01-14
Adults who take one of the world's most commonly prescribed sleep medications are significantly more at risk for nighttime falls and potential injury, according to a new study by the University of Colorado at Boulder.
The study, which involved 25 healthy adults, showed 58 percent of the older adults and 27 percent of the young adults who took a hypnotic, sleep-inducing drug called zolpidem showed a significant loss of balance when awakened two hours after sleep. The findings are important because falls are the leading cause of injury in older adults, and 30 percent of ...
International Planck mission peels back layers of the universe
2011-01-14
(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– Planck –– an international satellite that peers back into the beginning of the universe –– has produced what scientists are calling new and provocative data. The satellite is a European Space Agency mission with significant contributions from NASA.
On Tuesday, the Planck mission released a new data catalog with initial maps of the entire sky. The catalog includes thousands of never-before-seen dusty cocoons where stars are forming, and some of the most massive clusters of galaxies ever observed.
"Encoded in the Planck maps is an enormous ...
Women with false-positive mammograms report high anxiety and reduced quality of life
2011-01-14
Doctors are calling for women to receive more information about the pitfalls of breast cancer screening, as well as the benefits, after some women who received false-positive results faced serious anxiety and reduced quality of life for at least a year.
A study published online by BJS, the British Journal of Surgery, shows that patients with false-positive results - where the mammogram is abnormal but no cancer is present - had to undergo more diagnostic procedures than women with breast cancer before they were given the all clear.
Researchers from The Netherlands ...