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Background: African American children and adolescents make up a disproportionately large segment of those classified as overweight and obese. The purpose of this study was to examine social and behavioral factors associated with accelerated accumulation of weight and adiposity among this group., Methods: The data for this cross-sectional study were drawn from the Jackson Heart KIDS Pilot Study - an offspring cohort study comprising 12- to 19-year-old descendants of Jackson Heart Study participants (N=212). Body mass index (BMI) and waist circumference were the outcomes of interest. Daily hassles, fruit and vegetable consumption, physical activity, television watching, parent/grandparent weight status and participant birth weight, age and sex were the independent variables included in the analyses., Results: Males and females were equally represented in the study and the mean BMI and waist circumference for adolescents in the study was 25.81±7.78 kg/m 2 and 83.91 ± 19.81 cm, respectively. Fully adjusted linear regression models for the total sample produced results indicating that age, television viewing, weight control, and parental weight status were positively associated with BMI and waist circumference, respectively. Findings from sex-stratified models for BMI and waist circumference indicated that the significance of coefficients for age, television viewing, and parent/grandparent weight status varied by sex., Conclusions: Knowledge is limited about how sex or gender interact with social and behavioral factors to influence African Americans' health and additional studies are needed to specify how these factors interact to accelerate weight gain and adipose tissue accumulation over the life course., Competing Interests: Competing Interests: None declared., (Copyright © 2021, Ethnicity & Disease, Inc.)

Introduction: The current hypercompetitive extramural funding environment in the United States emphasizes the critical need for effective research training programs that focus not only on grantsmanship, but on skill development across the full range of research activities, culminating in writing research results for publication. Using Writing Accountability Groups (WAG), the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) funded Obesity Health Disparities (OHD) PRIDE is one of the few research training and mentoring programs that places an equal focus on scientific writing and grant writing. This article reports on the utility of WAGs for OHD PRIDE mentees., Method: Participants included 14 of 26 individuals who were fellows in the OHD PRIDE research training and mentoring program. A typical WAG has between four and eight members who meet for one hour each week over a 10-week period and commit a priori to attend at least 70% of the sessions. Summary statistics were produced to characterize number of peer-reviewed publications, grants, years in academic rank, and category of current academic rank, barriers to frequency of writing, and duration of writing. Results from pre- and post-WAG surveys were compared to determine the overall impact of the WAG. The study period discussed in this article took place between January and December 2017 and included data from three 10-week cycles beginning in February, May, and September., Results: Fifty-three percent of OHD PRIDE participants successfully completed at least one 10-week WAG cycle. The WAGs did not have a statistically significant impact on either the frequency of writing or the duration of writing. However, the majority of the participants who successfully completed at least one WAG cycle reported that they either maintained or increased their frequency or duration of writing., Conclusion: By providing a structured approach to developing and/or enhancing a practice of consistent writing, time management skills, and collaborative relationships, the WAG has promise for enhancing scientific writing skills for many trainees and early-career faculty. Longer term follow-up is needed to more fully assess the potential impact of WAGs., Competing Interests: Competing Interests: None declared., (Copyright © 2020, Ethnicity & Disease, Inc.)

The development of research training opportunities for investigators from the untapped pool of traditionally underrepresented racial/ethnic groups has gained intense interest at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The significant and persistent disparity in the likelihood of R01 funding between African American and Whites was highlighted in the groundbreaking 2011 report, Race, Ethnicity, and NIH Research Awards . Disparities in funding success were also shown to exist at the institutional level, as 30 institutions receive a disproportionate share of federal research funding. Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) have a dual commitment to education and research; however, the teaching loads at HBCUs may present challenges for research-oriented faculty. Few research training and mentoring programs have been specifically designed for this group. During 2015 and 2016, we held three conversation cafés with 77 participants in Jackson, Mississippi and Baltimore, Maryland. The purpose of this article is to describe findings from these conversation cafés regarding barriers and facilitators to building robust research careers at HBCUs, and to illustrate how these data were used to adapt the conceptual framework for the NHLBI-funded Obesity Health Disparities (OHD) PRIDE program. Identified barriers included teaching and advising loads, infrastructures, and lack of research mentors on campus. The benefit of incorporating research into classroom teaching was a noted facilitator., Competing Interests: Competing Interests: None declared., (Copyright © 2020, Ethnicity & Disease, Inc.)

Mentoring has been consistently identified as an important element for career advancement in many biomedical and health professional disciplines and has been found to be critical for success and promotion in academic settings. Early-career faculty from groups underrepresented in biomedical research, however, are less likely to have mentors, and in general, receive less mentoring than their majority-group peers, particularly among those employed in teaching-intensive institutions. This article describes Obesity Health Disparities (OHD) PRIDE, a theoretically and conceptually based research training and mentoring program designed for early-career faculty who trained or are employed at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs)., Competing Interests: Competing Interests: None declared.

The Jackson Heart Study Undergraduate Training Center (UTC) at Tougaloo College was developed to increase the numbers of African-American students entering public health and health related fields. The UTC includes a scholars program for undergraduate students at Tougaloo College, three four-week programs for high school students called the SLAM (science, language arts, and mathematics) workshops, and an introductory epidemiology course for healthcare professionals and graduate students. The scholars program recruits 12 Tougaloo College freshmen annually for the duration of their undergraduate education. As of the 2005 summer, 512 students have enrolled in the SLAM workshops. The introduction to epidemiology course has provided training for 155 individuals from 1999 to 2004. This paper documents the need for this program based on the conspicuously small proportion of African Americans who are health practitioners in Mississippi. The content and selection process for each program is described, and a summary of the enrollment history, characteristics of the program participants, and their accomplishments is presented. Finally, the methods of program assessment and tracking are discussed.