News: Southern Community Cohort Study

Rising obesity rates in several Southern states are leading to a rapid increase in new cases of diabetes among both black and white adults. A new study helmed by investigators at the University of Texas Health Science Center and Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) found the risk of diabetes is double for black patients.

Living in an economically disadvantaged neighborhood is likely to lead to death at an earlier age, especially among African-Americans, new research shows. The death rate is even more pronounced among disadvantaged individuals with unhealthy lifestyle habits.

African-Americans are more likely to die from lung cancer than whites and yet few studies of possible genetic factors that contribute to this disparity have been conducted. Melinda Aldrich, Ph.D., MPH, and colleagues conducted a first-of-its-kind genome-wide association study of lung cancer survival in 286 African-Americans enrolled in the Southern Community Cohort Study. Reporting recently […]

Interested in how cancer prevention recommendations play out in low-income populations, epidemiologist Shaneda Warren Anderson, Ph.D., and colleagues analyzed data from 61,098 adults, with overrepresentation of low-income whites and African-Americans. The team measured adherence to American Cancer Society (ACS) recommendations regarding body mass index, physical activity, diet, alcohol intake and smoking status, and they gathered […]

Eating a healthy diet was linked with a lower risk of dying from heart disease, stroke, cancer or other diseases among a population of low-income individuals living in the Southeastern U.S., according to research led by Vanderbilt University investigators. Nearly two-thirds of the participants in the study were African-American. The study by first author Danxia […]