Longitudinal change in physical activity and disability in adults.

OBJECTIVES: To prospectively examine whether physical activity or change in physical activity increases or decreases the risk of disability later in life. METHODS: Tobit regression models were used to examine the effect of physical activity at baseline and change from baseline on disability 10 and 20 years later in 6913 adults. RESULTS: Increasing recreational physical activity was associated with reduced risk of disability whereas reducing recreational physical activity increased the risk of disability after 10 years. CONCLUSIONS: The analyses reveal a protective effect of sustained physical activity on disability among adults.

Physician evaluation of obesity in health surveys: "who are you calling fat?".

Previous research on status generalization suggests that physicians may use non-medical factors in their evaluation, interpretation, and treatment of persons presenting for care. This study compares physicians' evaluations of obesity with physical measurements of body stature and fat collected from a large national health examination survey. While the anthropometric measures are strong predictors of physician evaluations of obesity, between 13% and 19% of the respondents were classified in ways that could not be predicted from the anthropometric measures. Moreover, personal and status characteristics were related to physicians' evaluations of obesity. Women, especially White and taller women, were more likely to be evaluated as obese than would be predicted from the anthropometric measures-African American women were less likely than their White counterparts to be so classified. Physicians' evaluation of obesity was least consistent with measured obesity for older respondents. Indeed among men, age was the most important status characteristic shaping physician evaluations: older men were more likely to be evaluated as obese. The findings suggest that the cluster of status characteristics is important to physicians during medical evaluations.