ArticleNursing research
Use of Food to Cope With Culturally Relevant Stressful Life Events Is Associated With Body Mass Index in African American Women.
Article in Nursing research. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed.
- Perspectives of stress and coping among older, college-educated African American women: a constructivist grounded theory study.The Gerontologist · 2026Article
- Interpreting psychological resilience in young African American women: a multilevel socioecological framework.Frontiers in public health · 2026Article
- Article
- Adverse Childhood Experiences and BMI: Lifecourse Associations in a Black-White U.S. Women Cohort.American journal of preventive medicine · 2024Article
- The wear and tear of racism: Self-silencing from the perspective of young Black women.SSM. Qualitative research in health · 2023Article
- Lifetime stressor exposure, systemic inflammation during pregnancy, and preterm birth among Black American women.Brain, behavior, and immunity · 2022Article
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Authors and funding
11 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundAlthough stress is an established contributor to obesity (in general population studies), mechanisms to explain this association in African American women that incorporate culturally relevant frameworks have received little attention.
objectiveTo investigate how stress is associated with body mass index (BMI) in this population, we examined multivariate models of BMI predicted by race-related, gender-related, and generic stressful life events and by use of food to cope with stress. We hypothesized that the three types of stressful life events would be indirectly associated with BMI through using food to cope with stress.
methodsPsychometrically robust measures were included in surveys administered to a socioeconomically diverse sample of 189 African American women aged 21-78 years. Hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling. We examined race-related, gender-related, and generic stressful life events as latent constructs indicated by exposure to and appraisal of potential stressors predicting a mediator, using food to cope, which predicted BMI; this model also included direct paths from the three latent stressful life event constructs to BMI.
resultsAlmost every participant reported using food in some way to cope with stress; 33% and 42% met established criteria for overweight and obesity, respectively. The race-related stressful life event construct was the only latent construct predicting using food to cope with stress, and using food to cope with stress predicted BMI. A significance test of indirect effects demonstrated that the race-related stressful life event construct was indirectly associated with BMI through the mediator, using food to cope. DISCUSSION: Culturally relevant stress exposures and stress-related eating are important areas of foci for tackling overweight, obesity, and related health inequities in African American women. Findings highlight the importance of developing more complex models to understand the stress-related factors that elevate risk for overweight and obesity in this population.
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