Faculty Affiliate Loneke Blackman Carr Co-Authors Publication

Professional headshot featuring Faculty Affiliate Loneke Blackman Carr

Faculty Affiliate Loneke Blackman Carr, Assistant Professor in the Department of Nutritional Sciences at the University of Connecticut, recently co-authored a paper on how web-based communities can help Black women reach their target goals for physical activity.

Describing the background and objective of this study, Carr and colleagues (2023) write:

About 59%-73% of Black women do not meet the recommended targets for physical activity (PA). PA is a key modifiable lifestyle factor that can help mitigate risk for chronic diseases such as obesity, diabetes, and hypertension that disproportionately affect Black women. Web-based communities focused on PA have been emerging in recent years as web-based gathering spaces to provide support for PA in specific populations. One example is Black Girls Run (BGR), which is devoted to promoting PA in Black women. The purpose of this study was to describe the content shared on the BGR public Facebook page to provide insight into how web-based communities engage Black women in PA and inform the development of web-based PA interventions for Black women.

The article, which was published in JMIR Formative Research.