AVONDALE, AZ (By Lynh Bui, Arizona Republic) March 27, 2006 — As thousands of Hispanics increase the state's population each year, they're also expanding their waistlines.

The U.S. lifestyle of cheap fast food and little physical activity is a dangerous combination for poor Mexican immigrants, whose genes work against them when it comes to weight, diabetes and heart disease, researchers say.

Those researchers worry that if state and public-health agencies don't tackle the issue, the Valley's population will be fatter and suffer more health problems than the rest of the country.

But Avondale and researchers at the Translational Genomics Research Institute hope to stop the trend before the problem puts on more pounds.

TGen's latest research found that eight of 10 Avondale adults are overweight or obese. Avondale and TGen have worked together for the past year to study residents' cardiovascular health, and the partnership received recognition last week from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Johanna Wolford, heading the TGen study, hopes the work will lead to culturally customized diets, educational materials and health plans that can curb the disturbing rate of cardiovascular disease within the ethnic group.

Wolford's study sampled about 500 people and focused on the southwest Valley city of more than 60,000 primarily because it's nearly half Hispanic.

She said that if more Avondale residents are going up belt sizes, the rest of Arizona might do the same.

"Our Mexican-immigrant population has just exploded," Wolford said.

She added that Hispanics suffer a decrease in health when they cross the border from Mexico, which could translate to a "big public health problem."

About 55 percent of Hispanics in Arizona are overweight, according to the Henry J. Kaiser Family Health Foundation. That number is on par with the national average for the entire U.S. population and two percentage points shy of the national average for the Hispanic population.

But if results from the Avondale study - at 80 percent overweight - are a glimpse into Arizona's future, then the state could quickly outpace the national figures.

And the issue is not just about going up a few pant sizes.

Obesity opens the door to "silent killers" such as diabetes and high blood pressure, said Seline Szkupinski-Quiroga, a medical anthropologist and assistant professor at Arizona State University.

But those preventable diseases are difficult to curb in a population that is mostly uninsured.

"Many Hispanics don't have a regular health care practitioner, and if a person is not experiencing severe symptoms, they think they're fine," Szkupinski-Quiroga said.

Phoenix resident Elizabeth Benitz caught her problem before it grew more serious.

The 38-year-old visits the doctor regularly and discovered she had diabetes when she was pregnant with her youngest son. Now, she avoids such foods as pork, milk and wheat to tame her blood-sugar levels.

Benitz's 21-year-old daughter, Elizabeth Marquez, takes her mother to the grocery store to make sure her mom doesn't stray from the regimen.

"I told her, 'You can't buy wheat, you've got to buy the other one,' " Marquez said as she was loading groceries after shopping at Phoenix Ranch Market. "But she grabbed a loaf of wheat (bread) anyway."

Not everyone in Avondale was as quickly diagnosed as Benitz. That many were clueless to some of the potentially deadly diseases they harbored was the "scariest" part of TGen's results, Wolford said.

Surveys found 88 percent of the adults in Avondale had high blood pressure but that more than half of that group had no idea they had this problem.

About 25 percent in the study were also in the dark about having glucose levels typical of those who are diabetic. If diabetes is left untreated, it can result in kidney failure.

Besides the high concentration of Hispanics in Avondale, the city was chosen for its Healthy Avondale 2010 program, Wolford said.

Launched in 2003, the program encourages residents to get fit and make healthful choices, with 2010 as the target goal for successful results.

The city received preliminary results from TGen's study last summer, and the alarming figures prompted Avondale to hire a Spanish-speaking health liaison in January. The new liaison not only translates educational materials for Healthy Avondale but performs community outreach.

That is the level of commitment other agencies and the state must take on if they want to be successful, Szkupinski-Quiroga said, and that will require more than just providing bilingual pamphlets.

"There needs to be drastic efforts for prevention and education," Szkupinski-Quiroga said. "It's about having cultural humility and cultural competence on the part of clinicians and health care providers."