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BMI Growth Profiles Among Black Children from Immigrant and US-Born Families

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Abstract

A large body of research has documented racial/ethnic disparities in childhood obesity in the United States (US) but less work has sought to understand differences within racial groups. Longitudinal studies are needed to describe BMI trajectories across development, particularly for Black children from immigrant families who have been underrepresented in childhood obesity research. The current study utilizes BMI data collected longitudinally from ages 5 to 8 years and growth mixture modeling to (1) identify and visualize growth patterns among Black children from primarily Caribbean immigrant families, and (2) to compare these patterns to growth trajectories among Black children from US-born families. First, we identified four classes or trajectories of growth for Black children from immigrant families. The largest trajectory (70% of the sample) maintained non-overweight throughout the study period. A second trajectory developed overweight by age 8 (25%). Two small trajectory groups demonstrated high rates of moderate and severe obesity–i.e., specifically, a trajectory of accelerated weight gain ending in moderate/severe obesity (3%), and a trajectory of early severe obesity with BMI decreasing slightly with age (2%). We identified a very similar four class/trajectory model among Black children from US-born families, and compared the model to the one for children from immigrant families using multi-group growth mixture modeling. We found that the patterns of growth did not differ significantly between the populations, with two notable exceptions. Among Black children from immigrant families, ∼ 5% were classified into the two heavier BMI trajectories, compared to ∼ 11% of children from US-born families. Additionally, among children with an accelerated weight gain trajectory, children from immigrant families had lower BMIs on average at each time point than children from US-born families. These findings describe the multiple trajectories of weight gain among Black children from immigrant families and demonstrate that although these trajectories are largely similar to those of Black children from US-born families, the differences provide some evidence for lower obesity risk among Black children from immigrant families compared to Black children from US-born families. As this study is the first to describe BMI trajectories for Black children from immigrant families across early and middle childhood, future work is needed to replicate these results and to explore differences in heavier weight trajectories between children from immigrant and US-born families.

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Data Availability

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study cannot be shared by the study authors. Requests for data would need to be made directly to the NYC Department of Education (DOE).

Code Availability

Analysis code is available upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to express our deep gratitude to the schools and families who participated in the study.

Funding

Supported by US Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences Grant R305F050245 and by the National Institute of Mental Health grant R01 MH077331-04 to the senior (last) author and by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute grant K01HL138114 to the first author. Funding sources were not involved in the study design or in the decision to submit the article for publication. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the funders.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Population Health, NYU Grossman School of Medicine, 180 Madison Ave, New York, NY, 10016, USA

    Alexandra Ursache, Alicia Chung, Spring Dawson-McClure & Laurie Miller Brotman

  2. Biobehavioral Health, The Pennsylvania State University, 219 Biobehavioral Health Building, University Park, PA, 16802, USA

    Brandi Y. Rollins

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Contributions

AU- conceptualization, writing-original draft preparation. BR- conceptualization, formal analysis, writing- review & editing. AC- conceptualization, writing- review & editing. SDM- conceptualization, supervision. LMB- conceptualization, resources, supervision, writing- review & editing. All authors approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Alexandra Ursache.

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Ethics Approval

Approval was granted by the institutional review boards of New York University School of Medicine and the NYC Department of Education (DOE). The procedures used in this study adhere to the tenets of the Declaration of Helsinki.

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Written informed consent for child and parent participation in this study was obtained from parents.

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The authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.

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Ursache, A., Rollins, B.Y., Chung, A. et al. BMI Growth Profiles Among Black Children from Immigrant and US-Born Families. J Immigrant Minority Health (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10903-024-01596-4

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