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Assessing community readiness for overweight and obesity prevention among Ghanaian immigrants living in Greater Manchester, England

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posted on 2023-11-17, 14:10 authored by Hibbah Osei-KwasiHibbah Osei-Kwasi, Peter Jackson, Robert Akparibo, Michelle Holdsworth, Mary Nicolaou, Ama De Graft Aikins, Paula GriffithsPaula Griffiths

Aim: This study assesses community readiness to prevent overweight/obesity among Ghanaian immigrants in Greater Manchester, England. 

Subject and method: The Community Readiness Model (CRM) was applied using a semi-structured interview tool with 13 key informants (religious and other key community members) addressing five readiness dimensions. A maximum of 9 points per dimension (from 1 = no awareness to 9 = high level of community ownership), was assigned, alongside qualitative textual thematic analysis. 

Results: The mean readiness score indicated that the study population was in the “vague awareness stage” (3.08 ± 0.98). The highest score was observed for community knowledge of the issue (4.42 ± 0.99) which was in the pre-planning phase, followed by community climate (vague awareness; 3.58 ± 0.62). The lowest scores were seen for resources (denial/resistance; 2.70 ± 0.61) and knowledge of efforts (no awareness; 1.53 ± 0.44). Findings identified structural barriers, including poor living conditions as a result of poorly paid menial jobs and high workload, contributing to the adoption of unhealthy lifestyle behaviours. Socio-cultural factors such as fatalism, hereditary factors, and social status were associated with acceptance of overweight. 

Conclusion: Despite recognising overweight/obesity as an important health issue in these communities, especially among women, it is not seen as a priority for targeting change. To help these communities to become more ready for interventions that tackle overweight/obesity, the focus should initially be to address the structural barriers identified, including reducing poverty, alongside designing interventions that work with these structural barriers, and thereafter focus on the socio-cultural factors.

Funding

AXA Research Fund

History

School

  • Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences

Published in

Journal of Public Health

Volume

31

Issue

12

Pages

1953-1967

Publisher

Springer

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Rights holder

© The Authors

Publisher statement

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

Acceptance date

2022-11-06

Publication date

2022-11-22

Copyright date

2022

ISSN

2198-1833

eISSN

1613-2238

Language

  • en

Depositor

Dr Hibbah Osei-Kwasi. Deposit date: 21 March 2023

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