Childhood Obesity and Cardiometabolic Health among Impoverished Mexican Americans

Elevated rates of childhood obesity are a lingering public health concern. Recent national statistics indicate Mexican American youth are nearly twice as likely to be obese as non-Hispanic white youth. Cardiometabolic risk indicators are also elevated among Mexican American children relative to children of other ethnicities. The identification of risk and resiliency predictors of poor health during childhood and adolescence from a longitudinal and developmental perspective will provide specific targets amenable to preventive public health interventions. We propose to capitalize on longitudinal data collected by an NIH-funded study of very low income Mexican American mothers and youth (LMN) that assessed a multitude of individual, biological, family, and environmental risk and protective factors from the prenatal period through ten years of age, including 13 objective measures of child weight and health beginning at birth. We propose to leverage this existing longitudinal dataset and evaluate weight gain and cardiometabolic health trajectories, and additional risk and resiliency factors at child ages 12-13 and 15-16. In combination, we will: 1) Examine trajectories of child weight gain from birth to age 15-16 years and associated cardiometabolic health consequences (e.g., blood pressure, HbA1c, cholesterol, CRP, IL-6); 2) Examine macro-level social and environmental risk and protective factors that influence developmental trajectories in weight gain and cardiometabolic health. 3) Examine proximal influences (e.g., maternal and child mental health; family feeding and behavioral practices) on trajectories of weight gain and cardiometabolic health; 4) Conduct a nuanced examination of ecological and salient stressors that potentially alter weight gain and cardiometabolic trajectories, focusing on the unique characteristics of youth who are relatively unaffected, recover, or are chronically affected. The proposed study will analyze data from biological measures, anthropometric measures, parent report, youth report, medical records, and observational protocols. Our scientific approach emphasizes the view that positive health can best be achieved by understanding social and economic forces that shape eating behavior and weight gain. This project holds great potential to address central questions about contributors to weight gain and obesity risk in a high-risk group, and enhance opportunities for prevention of obesity and associated health problems.