Association Between General Health and Exercise in Hispanic Adults in the United States
Jaylee Brown, Bo Collins, Danielle DeHetre, & Jessica Eby
Department of Public Health, Grand Valley State University
Introduction
Results
Results of this research study showed that Hispanic adults who reported general health as either fair or poor were less likely to exercise in the past 30 days. The results aligned with previous research that examined lack of physical activity resulting in lower overall health scores among Hispanic adults in the U.S. As the Hispanic population continues to rise in the U.S, health implications resulting from decreased exercise in this population may result in an increased public health concern. Future research focusing on frequency and intensity of exercise in this population may help depict how Hispanics general health is affected by exercise. This research is essential to advocating for increasing the overall health of this community and public health at large.
Introduction and Purpose
Methods
Data Analysis
Results
Discussion/ Conclusion
The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between exercise and general health in Hispanic/Latino adults. Currently, Hispanic/Latino’s account for 18% of the ethnic population in the United States and is expected to grow to 82% by 2050 (Garcini et al., 2017). Approximately, 33% of Hispanic adults over 50 years old do not meet the recommended guidelines for exercise (Burrows et al., 2020).
Research Question
Is there an association between general health status and exercise habits among Hispanic adults in the United States?
HO: There is no association between general health status and exercising in the past 30 days among Hispanic adults in the United States.
HA:There is an association between general health status and exercising in the past 30 days among Hispanic adults in the United States.
‘Fair’ health had an odds ratio of 0.445. This indicated that Hispanic adults who reported ‘Fair’ general health held a 55.5% lower likelihood of exercising in the past 30 days. ‘Poor’ health had an odds ratio of 0.192. This indicated that Hispanic adults who reported ‘Poor’ general health had an 80.8% lower likelihood of exercising in the past 30 days.
In our data, the majority of Hispanic adults were 18 - 64 years old (81.5%) and the remaining were 65 and older (18.5). There was also a higher percentage of females (56.5%) than males (43.3%).
The results of our Chi-square test were significant (χ2 (4, 357)=23.144, p <.001), indicating that exercise and general health were related.
A multinomial logtistic regression was also performed as a better fit for our outcome variable, general health, involving our predictor variable, exercise, (χ 2 (4, 357)=22.078 , p <.001). This resulted in the reports of general health being ‘Excellent’ and ‘Very Good’ to be statistically insignificant but ‘Fair’ and ‘Poor’ reports had an association.
Data was obtained through the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) in 2014. A total of 35,383 Hispanic individuals were surveyed but a subset of 4,540 were utilized to make up our dataset through SPSS 27. The data was cleaned to portray complete responses for our variables of Hispanic, age, exercise, sex, and general health. Our final sample size was 357, which achieved an alpha of 0.05 and .95 power.
A Chi Square and Multinomial Regression were run to determine if there was an association between exercise and general health.
References
Burrows, B., Andrade, F. C. D., Piedra, L., Xu, S., Aguiñaga, S., Steinberg, N., Sarkisian, C., & Hernandez, R. (2021). The Influence of Evidence-based Exercise and Age Reattribution on Physical Function in Hispanic Older Adults: Results from the ¡Caminemos! Randomized Controlled Trial. Journal of Applied Gerontology : The Official Journal of the Southern Gerontological Society, 40(3), 278–288. https://doi.org/10.1177/0733464820927171
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2020, August 31). Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/brfss/index.html
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2021, June 16). Health-Related Quality of Life. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/hrqol/index.htm
Garcini, L., Renzaho, A., Molina, M., & Ayala, G. (2017). Health-related quality of life among Mexican-origin Latinos: The role of immigration legal status. Ethnicity & Health, 23, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/13557858.2017.1283392
‘Excellent’, ‘Very Good’ and ‘Good’ health have the highest numbers of individuals who reported to have exercised in the past 30 days.