The Center for Research on Men’s Health at Vanderbilt University is a university-wide research center with a two-pronged …
The Center for Research on Men’s Health at Vanderbilt University is a university-wide research center with a two-pronged mission to promote men’s health and reduce health disparities that specializes in individually tailoring health promotion interventions to men. This pilot study – which is the first rigorously designed, community-based weight-loss intervention for obese African American and Latino men ages 40-59 – will compare the efficacy of the intervention to an attention control group in a 6-month randomized-controlled trial. The study also includes the first health communications gender-tailored on deeper social and cultural aspects of masculinity that recognizes the heterogeneity among African American and Latino men, and explores if there is a positive correlation between genetically predicted BMI and BMI measured at baseline. We hypothesize that men assigned to the pilot intervention will lose more weight and demonstrate and maintain greater improvements in blood glucose levels, adiposity, healthy eating, physical activity, and psychosocial mediators (e.g., self-efficacy, social support, motivation) than those randomized to the attention control group.