Summary Obesity continues to be a public health concern across the globe. Obesity has a demonstrated association with health behaviors and health outcomes, such as diabetes, hypertension, and cancer. Over the past two decades, obesity has increased worldwide and remains highest in the US. It is critical to understand the definition of obesity, using body mass index (BMI) appropriately, recent estimates, and risk factors as a framework within which clinicians should work to help reduce the burden of obesity. This framework, including the Healthy People 2020 place-based approach to social determinants of health, are described in this chapter.

OBJECTIVE -To explore the relationship between depressive symptoms and incidence of type 2 diabetes in women. RESULTS -During 4 years of follow-up (282,317 person-years), 973 incident cases of type 2 diabetes were documented. Age-adjusted RR of developing type 2 diabetes for women with presence of depressive symptoms was 1.55 (95% CI 1.27-1.90). Additional adjustment for BMI resulted in a RR of developing type 2 diabetes of 1.36 (1.11-1.67). The multivariate RR of developing type 2 diabetes was 1.22 (1.00 -1.50). After excluding women diagnosed with diabetes between 1992 and 1994, 472 incident cases of type 2 diabetes were documented for the follow-up period from 1994 to 1996 (148,889 person-years). The multivariate RR of developing type 2 diabetes for women with depressive symptoms was 1.29 (0.96 -1.72). RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODSCONCLUSIONS -Our data suggest that depressive symptoms are associated with a modest increase in the risk of type 2 diabetes.

Although the importance of community engagement in research has been previously established, there are few evidence-based approaches for measuring the level of community engagement in research projects. A quantitative community engagement measure was developed, aligned with 11 engagement principles (EPs) previously established in the literature. The measure has 96 Likert response items; 3–5 quality items and 3–5 quantity items measure each EP. Cronbach’s alpha is used to examine the internal consistency of items that measure a single EP. Every EP item group had a Cronbach’s alpha > .85, which indicates strong internal consistency for all question groups across both scales (quality and quantity). This information determines the level of community engagement, which can be correlated with other research outcomes.

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