Primary Submission Category: Health equity
Cardiometabolic Health Among Diverse Emerging Adults in the 3E Study and NHANES
Authors: Lindsay Hoyt, Lucia Calderon, Giovanna Rafanello, Omisha Sangani, Dixie Blumenshine, Ryan Gamba, Robert Ream, Tatyana Bidopia, Natasha Burke, Alison Cohen,
Presenting Author: Lindsay Hoyt*
Emerging adulthood (ages 18-24) represents a particularly sensitive period for studying the emergence of cardiometabolic health inequalities in the United States, as young people begin to establish paths towards higher education, the labor market, and healthy lives. However, previous studies are often limited by small samples or lack of strong measurement. The new 3E Study provides a unique opportunity to examine both cardiometabolic and socioeconomic factors among emerging adult (EA) college students from diverse backgrounds. This paper aims to describe the distribution – and gender, racial/ethnic, and socioeconomic differences – of key cardiometabolic health indicators (weight, height, BMI, waist-hip ratio, blood pressure, diagnosed hypertension, and medication use) within the 3E Study sample and in comparison to the most recent data from EAs enrolled in NHANES (2021-2023).
Compared to NHANES (N = 511), our ongoing cohort already has 1003 EAs enrolled. Importantly, the 3E Study includes larger samples of Asian (33% vs. 26%) and Latine (37% vs. 8%) participants, who are historically underrepresented in cardiometabolic health research. Overall, BMI and waist-hip ratio were similar between the samples, as were differences by race/ethnicity, and poverty status. However, we observed a larger percentage of obese young adults in NHANES (26%) as compared to 3E (16%). On the other hand, 3E young adults (32%) were more likely to have high blood pressure than NHANES (24%). Overall, these findings suggest that it is feasible to collect robust cardiometabolic data at scale among EAs, though college students may differ systematically from the broader EA population in ways that warrant careful consideration. Ultimately, the 3E Study aims to advance the field by identifying unique educational and economic predictors of health—factors not captured in NHANES— expanding the social determinants framework for understanding cardiometabolic health among diverse EAs.