Jennifer Lemacks

Area of research

Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health · General Health Professions

Research interest

Research topics from publications: Validation of body adiposity index as a measure of obesity in overweight and obese postmenopausal white women and its comparison with body mass index; Fatalism, Social Support and Self-Management Perceptions among Rural African Americans Living with Diabetes and Pre-Diabetes; Influencing cardiovascular health habits in the rural, deep south: results of a cluster randomized trial; A Structural Equation Modeling Analysis to Explore Diabetes Self-Care Factors in a Rural Sample; Dietary influence on calcitropic hormones and adiposity in Caucasian and African American postmenopausal women assessed by structural equation modeling (SEM); Sex and Body Circumferences Associated with Serum Leptin in African American Adults; The church bridge project focus group results: African American perspectives of weight management programs to improve nutrition and physical activity behaviors; A Student-Led Pilot Project to Improve Calcium Intake and a Healthy Lifestyle in African American Communities; Development and Evaluation of a Measure for Social Support Provided by Friends during Lifestyle Management Programs; Antioxidant intake in relation to serum C-reactive protein in mid-life and older African Americans. Representative work: OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether the recently developed body adiposity index (BAI) in Mexican American and African American women could be validated in postmenopausal American white women and to determine if it is a better obesity classification measure than body mass index (BMI) is in the latter population. METHODS: Total body percentage adiposity (%adiposity) measured by dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry (DXA) was compared with total body %adiposity predicted by BAI in 187 overweight/obese postmenopausal white women (mean ± SD %adiposity, 45.9 ± 4.9% and 38.3 ± 6.2% for DXA and BAI, respectively). SPSS 19.0 and Medcalc 11.6.1.0 were used to conduct Pearson's corr Diabetes is a public health problem and a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease, the leading cause of death in the United States. Diabetes is prevalent among underserved rural populations. The purposes of this study were to perform secondary analyses of existing clinical trial data to determine whether a diabetes health promotion and disease risk reduction intervention had an effect on diabetes fatalism, social support,