Loneke Blackman Carr, University of Connecticut and Jameta Nicole Barlow, George Washington University

The popularity of weight loss drugs such as Ozempic and Mounjaro continue to reflect Americans’ desire to slim down. While these new drugs have offered a solution for people struggling with obesity, many eligible patients – especially Black adults – cannot afford the high price.

These drugs are also not a one-stop solution for better health, as healthy eating and regular exercise are also key to losing weight. But current weight loss interventions based on lifestyle changes largely fail to meet the needs of Black women.

As community health researchers, we wondered why scientists have been unable to craft a lifestyle-based weight loss solution that works for Black women.

So we reviewed 10 years of research on weight loss interventions based on lifestyle changes. We found that only a few studies focused on Black women, and those that did often resulted in only small amounts of weight loss and were inconsistent in how they approached weight loss. Why is that?

Missing the mark for Black women

Obesity increases the risk of developing weight-related conditions such as Type 2 diabetes, heart disease and some types of cancer. Nearly 60% of Black women in the U.S. are obese, placing them at greater risk of developing these conditions.

Lifestyle interventions focusing on healthy diet and increased physical activity are proven to help most people lose weight, typically resulting in a 5% to 10% weight reduction that also reduces the risk of chronic disease. However, these lifestyle interventions usually result in only a 2% to 3% weight loss in Black women.

Our review suggests that lifestyle-based weight loss has been stymied among Black women because they often aren’t included in this research. Because their lived experiences aren’t considered in these studies, these interventions might not meet their specific needs. Of the 138 studies we assessed, Black women made up at least half of the participants in only eight studies.

Research on why lifestyle interventions are often less effective for Black women is lacking. However, some studies highlight the effects of race and gender on their daily lives as potential factors.

The superwoman role

Black women exposed to the persistent stress of navigating everyday racism and sexism face the additional burden of what researchers call the superwoman role. Not only do Black women have to weather their own experiences of race- and gender-based inequalities, they’re also expected to be invulnerable, hyperindependent and suppress their emotions in order to seem strong to their family and community. Many minimize their vulnerabilities and overstress their capabilities in order to fulfill an overwhelming obligation to take care of other people.

Many famous names have spoken about the effects of being the strong superwoman. Actress Taraji P. Henson has pointed to how the need to display strength can lead to ignoring the physical and emotional needs of Black women.

Rapper Megan Thee Stallion spoke about the emotional toll of the superwoman role after being shot by rapper Tory Lanez. “As a Black woman … people expect me to take the punches, take the beating, take the lashings, and handle it with grace. But I’m human.”

The superwoman role levies a heavy tax on Black women, leaving little room to prioritize their health. To cope with the stress, some engage in emotional eating or binge eating. The constant demands of playing multiple caregiver roles can also disrupt physical activity.

Naturally, these challenges make it difficult to adopt healthier eating habits and a consistent exercise routine. Even when working toward weight loss, some Black women continue to gain weight.

Improving weight loss for Black women

Lifestyle interventions that fully integrate the lived experiences of Black women into treatment may be key to improving weight loss. We argue that Black Feminism and Womanism, which focus on the experiences of women of color, can guide researchers to rebuild and reframe weight loss interventions to be more effective for Black women.

Black Feminism and Womanism are approaches guiding Black women and girls to surviving and thriving, specifically by always considering the role that gender and race play in different issues. These frameworks focus on multiple areas of health and wellness, including physical, mental and emotional health, arguing that self-care and wellness practices are acts of social change.

Focusing on the full context of Black women’s lives can lead to better overall health. Obesity, specifically, is influenced by multiple factors, and treating obesity requires a focus on holistic health and well-being. This includes addressing Black women’s economic needs, incorporating faith practices central to Black life, attending to emotional and mental health, and building an environment that makes acquiring healthy food and engaging in daily exercise an easy choice.

Current weight loss interventions vary widely in which elements of Black women’s lives they focus on. For example, some emphasize spirituality, while others concentrate on emotional health. Approaches to weight loss that respond to individual needs and move away from one-size-fits-all will be critical to addressing the various aspects of Black women’s lives that affect their wellness.

If health care providers and researchers begin listening to and working with Black women to redesign weight loss interventions, they will likely find that their efforts at addressing obesity among Black women are more effective.

Loneke Blackman Carr, Assistant Professor of Community and Public Health Nutrition, University of Connecticut and Jameta Nicole Barlow, Associate Professor of Writing, Health Policy & Management and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies,, George Washington University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Jaeyeon Chung, Rice University

Think back to a time when you needed a quick answer, maybe for a recipe or a DIY project. A few years ago, most people’s first instinct was to “Google it.” Today, however, many people are more likely to reach for ChatGPT, OpenAI’s conversational AI, which is changing the way people look for information.

Rather than simply providing lists of websites, ChatGPT gives more direct, conversational responses. But can ChatGPT do more than just answer straightforward questions? Can it actually help people be more creative?

I study new technologies and consumer interaction with social media. My colleague Byung Lee and I set out to explore this question: Can ChatGPT genuinely assist people in creatively solving problems, and does it perform better at this than traditional search engines like Google?

Across a series of experiments in a study published in the journal Nature Human Behavour, we found that ChatGPT does boost creativity, especially in everyday, practical tasks. Here’s what we learned about how this technology is changing the way people solve problems, brainstorm ideas and think creatively.

ChatGPT and creative tasks

Imagine you’re searching for a creative gift idea for a teenage niece. Previously, you might have googled “creative gifts for teens” and then browsed articles until something clicked. Now, if you ask ChatGPT, it generates a direct response based on its analysis of patterns across the web. It might suggest a custom DIY project or a unique experience, crafting the idea in real time.

To explore whether ChatGPT surpasses Google in creative thinking tasks, we conducted five experiments where participants tackled various creative tasks. For example, we randomly assigned participants to either use ChatGPT for assistance, use Google search, or generate ideas on their own. Once the ideas were collected, external judges, unaware of the participants’ assigned conditions, rated each idea for creativity. We averaged the judges’ scores to provide an overall creativity rating.

One task involved brainstorming ways to repurpose everyday items, such as turning an old tennis racket and a garden hose into something new. Another asked participants to design an innovative dining table. The goal was to test whether ChatGPT could help people come up with more creative solutions compared with using a web search engine or just their own imagination.

The results were clear: Judges rated ideas generated with ChatGPT’s assistance as more creative than those generated with Google searches or without any assistance. Interestingly, ideas generated with ChatGPT – even without any human modification – scored higher in creativity than those generated with Google.

One notable finding was ChatGPT’s ability to generate incrementally creative ideas: those that improve or build on what already exists. While truly radical ideas might still be challenging for AI, ChatGPT excelled at suggesting practical yet innovative approaches. In the toy-design experiment, for example, participants using ChatGPT came up with imaginative designs, such as turning a leftover fan and a paper bag into a wind-powered craft.

Limits of AI creativity

ChatGPT’s strength lies in its ability to combine unrelated concepts into a cohesive response. Unlike Google, which requires users to sift through links and piece together information, ChatGPT offers an integrated answer that helps users articulate and refine ideas in a polished format. This makes ChatGPT promising as a creativity tool, especially for tasks that connect disparate ideas or generate new concepts.

It’s important to note, however, that ChatGPT doesn’t generate truly novel ideas. It recognizes and combines linguistic patterns from its training data, subsequently generating outputs with the most probable sequences based on its training. If you’re looking for a way to make an existing idea better or adapt it in a new way, ChatGPT can be a helpful resource. For something groundbreaking, though, human ingenuity and imagination are still essential.

Additionally, while ChatGPT can generate creative suggestions, these aren’t always practical or scalable without expert input. Steps such as screening, feasibility checks, fact-checking and market validation require human expertise. Given that ChatGPT’s responses may reflect biases in its training data, people should exercise caution in sensitive contexts such as those involving race or gender.

We also tested whether ChatGPT could assist with tasks often seen as requiring empathy, such as repurposing items cherished by a loved one. Surprisingly, ChatGPT enhanced creativity even in these scenarios, generating ideas that users found relevant and thoughtful. This result challenges the belief that AI cannot assist with emotionally driven tasks.

Future of AI and creativity

As ChatGPT and similar AI tools become more accessible, they open up new possibilities for creative tasks. Whether in the workplace or at home, AI could assist in brainstorming, problem-solving and enhancing creative projects. However, our research also points to the need for caution: While ChatGPT can augment human creativity, it doesn’t replace the unique human capacity for truly radical, out-of-the-box thinking.

This shift from Googling to asking ChatGPT represents more than just a new way to access information. It marks a transformation in how people collaborate with technology to think, create and innovate.

Jaeyeon Chung, Assistant Professor of Business, Rice University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Donald Chi, University of Washington

For more than 50 million Americans, finding a dentist is a difficult – in some cases, impossible – proposition. Many rural communities don’t have a dentist. People of color and those with disabilities often lack access, and only about one-third of dentists accept Medicaid.

That’s why dental therapists – professionals who don’t have a full dentistry degree but are trained to provide basic dental care – are becoming increasingly popular. Dental therapists are now authorized to practice in 14 states, and they focus primarily on underserved populations.

Dr. Donald Chi, a pediatric dentist and professor of oral health sciences at the University of Washington, explains the kind of training that dental therapists receive, the critical need for them throughout the U.S., and how they have affected the communities they serve.

The Conversation has collaborated with SciLine to bring you highlights from the discussion, which have been edited for brevity and clarity.

Who lacks adequate dental care in the U.S.?

Donald Chi: Low-income people often have difficulty finding and accessing dental care. That population includes racial and ethnic minorities, people with disabilities or special health care needs, and people in rural areas who live a long distance from a dental office.

What are some of the effects of poor oral health?

Chi: Oral health touches every part of our lives as human beings. To eat, to socialize, to hold a job and to learn, you need your teeth, and you need them to be healthy.

Painful cavities can get in the way of sleeping, chewing your food and your employment. Imagine if you had missing teeth in the front of your mouth because you had them removed because of large cavities. There are numerous studies that show that people missing their front teeth can’t find or hold down jobs. Both the pain and aesthetic aspects of poor oral health can really create problems.

What are dental therapists, what training do they receive, and what services do they provide?

Chi: Dental therapists are a lot like physician assistants. They’re not full-fledged dentists, but they’ve received enough training to provide a limited set of dental procedures. Dental therapists typically get anywhere from two to four years of training after high school, and they’re trained to provide preventive care.

Dental therapists can administer cleanings and fluoride treatment as well as sealants, that is, coatings that protect your teeth from bacteria. And they can do some relatively simple procedures – for instance, small fillings and simple tooth extractions. But dentists are still needed for more complex treatments: bigger fillings, complicated tooth extractions, root canals, crowns and dentures.

Dental therapists are not substitutes for dentists. Dental therapists have a limited scope of practice, but that scope is critical.

In a community with lots of unmet dental care needs, dental therapists can put out small fires. Dentists can then focus on putting out the big fires. It’s a team-based effort – dental therapists work with dentists to make sure that all of a community’s needs are met.

In 2006, Alaska became the first state to authorize dental therapists. What did your research reveal about how Alaska’s plan worked?

Chi: What we found is that Medicaid recipients, both children and adults, were less likely to have teeth removed after the authorization of dental therapists. This meant that more people were keeping their teeth longer, and they were more likely to get preventive care, like fluoride treatment and cleanings.

What other lessons have you learned from other states with dental therapists?

Chi: The rest of the 13 states that have authorized dental therapists have dental therapy programs that have been running for fewer than 20 years, which is about how long Alaska’s program has run.

But we’ve seen data out of Minnesota showing that Medicaid enrollees were more likely to get dental care after dental therapy was introduced. And we see similar types of outcomes in other areas served by dental therapists. To see this almost immediate impact has just been remarkable.

Besides visiting the dentist, what other ways can people promote good oral health?

Chi: Healthy eating is a great way to promote oral hygiene, maintain tooth enamel and reduce the likelihood of gum disease.

I realize healthy eating can be hard because of the limited availability and the relatively high costs of healthy food. But minimizing the amount of sugar in your diet and staying away from juice and sugary beverages are both good ways to protect your teeth.

Brushing twice a day with a toothpaste that contains fluoride and drinking fluoridated water will also maintain good oral health.

Watch the full interview to hear more.

SciLine is a free service based at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a nonprofit that helps journalists include scientific evidence and experts in their news stories.

Donald Chi, Professor of Oral Health Sciences, University of Washington

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.