Obesity Associated with Higher Mortality for Black Women

Design. Analysis of participants from the Black Women’s Health Study, a prospective cohort study that followed 59,001 black women aged 21 to 69 years from 1995 to 2008. Researchers recruited participants by inviting members of black professional associations, advertising in Essence magazine (a magazine targeted to black women), and soliciting participation from friends of early enrollees. Subjects provided data through mailed surveys, including self-reported height, weight, and waist circumference. A subset of 115 subjects participated in a validation study for which subjects had measured heights, weights, and waist circumference. Correlations between self-reported and measured values were 0.93 for height, 0.97 for weight, and 0.75 for waist circumference. Setting and participants. 51,695 black women who met the inclusion criteria for the study. From the full cohort of the Black Women’s Health Study, only observations from women over age 30 were included; women were excluded if they had a history of cancer (except nonmelanoma skin cancer) or cardiovascular disease at enrollment, were currently pregnant, had a BMI < 15 or ≥ 50 kg/m 2 , or had missing smoking status, height