A study conducted by researchers at Vanderbilt University, the National Institutes of Health, and the Harvard School of Public Health, finds that exercise, or the lack thereof, is not a major factor in explaining the racial health gap between Blacks and Whites. The study examined the daily routines of more than 80,000 people and found that both Whites and Blacks spent at least 60 percent of their waking day in sedentary activities. Only 16 percent of the women in the study and 25 percent of the men spent 150 minutes or more in moderate to vigorous physical activity.
The authors of the study hypothesize that since differences in exercise routines are not significant between the races, that factors such as access to healthcare, socioeconomic status, and perhaps some genetic factors are responsible for the racial gap in healthcare.
The article, “Sedentary and Physically Active Behavior Patterns Among Low-Income African-American and White Adults Living in the Southeastern United States,” may be accessed here.
