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Preventing Type 2 Diabetes in Black Emergent Adult

Black Americans are disproportionately affected by diabetes, with nearly double the rates of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), compared to non-Hispanic White adults. Though numerous factors affect these disparities, one modifiable risk factor may be that of binge eating (BE), which increases risk for binge-eating disorder (BED), which is associated with severe obesity, and often precedes a T2DM diagnosis, beginning in childhood or adolescence. Nearly 30% of Black women with obesity report binge eating episodes. Furthermore, given that binge and overeating may disparately increase the odds of obesity in Black adults (15-fold increase vs. 6-fold increase in White adults), reducing this behavior will be critical to prevent continued disparities in T2DM diagnosis. Given that Black women have the highest rates of obesity in the nation (57%), report disparate rates of weight gain between young adulthood and mid adulthood, and report disparate rates of emotional eating in adolescence, which is a risk factor for BE, one pathway to reducing disparities in T2DM risk in Black women may be to reduce binge eating and prevent weight gain in emerging adulthood (ages 18-25).