Community-Clinic Partnership to Promote Physical Activity in South Asian Women

Regular physical activity prevents type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM). Although physical inactivity and DM are common in the United States (US), the investigators data, and others,have shown that Asian Indian and Pakistani (South Asian) women are at even greater risk. South Asians (SA) are one of the fastest growing segments of the US population.Studies show that SA women have a markedly higher DM prevalence and are less physically active than women from other racial/ethnic groups.SA also have greater insulin resistance and visceral adiposity at a lower body mass index (BMI). A combination of regular, moderate intensity physical activity (PA) and resistance exercises has been shown to decrease visceral adiposity and improve insulin sensitivity, even without weight loss; thus, PA may be especially important for DM prevention among SA women. Despite being at increased risk, very few evidence-based DM prevention and PA interventions exist for SA women in the US.

This proposal builds on a successful academic-community partnership between Northwestern University and Metropolitan Asian Family Services, an organization that provides health care and social services to lower-income SA immigrant families. The partnership has focused on translating and implementing evidence-based lifestyle interventions for SA immigrants in real-world, clinic and community settings. The investigators formative research found that SA women, in particular, were not being reached by current efforts to promote PA. Importantly, however, the main reasons for the reduced effectiveness of traditional strategies for PA promotion related more to socio-cultural perceptions and beliefs than simply to language barriers. SA women reported little PA and had difficulty even defining exercise. Although 75% of women were sedentary and overweight, they did not recognize these as risk factors for DM. Lack of knowledge about benefits of PA, cultural and linguistic isolation, concerns about modesty, and rigid gender roles strongly influenced SA women's proclivity for physical inactivity. In this context, much more work will be needed to address SA women's physical inactivity than simple language translation of proven lifestyle interventions.