Table 2.
Participant Quotes, Organized by Themes and Sub-Themes and the Socioecological Framework’s Community and Environmental Domains
| COMMUNITY/INSTITUTIONAL | |
|---|---|
| Theme 9. Physician Influence | |
| 9a. Primary Care |
(9.0) “If my primary care physician did not think I should have it then I would have had second thoughts, but my primary care physician said that she thought it was a good idea that I looked into it and she referred me to the bariatric clinic.” – 49 year old non-Hispanic black female (9.1) “My primary doctor was very supportive.” – 66 year old non-Hispanic white female (9.2) “Well I really trust my primary. I’ve been seeing her for many years. Any other doctor wouldn’t have made that big of a difference, but she did.” – 55 year old non-Hispanic white female (9.3) “I had two doctors recommend it, big time. Actually three, heart doctor, family doctor and diabetes doctor.” – 54 year old non-Hispanic white male |
| SOCIETAL/ENVIRONMENTAL/PUBLIC POLICY | |
| Theme 10. Community-Based Support Programs | |
| 10a. Support Groups |
(10.0) “Why don’t you find more people to sit and talk or have group discussions about how we’re doing and what’s going on with us socially, mentally. What am I going through because I did go through some different emotional changes trying to stick through the programs as far as eating habits and thinking about hey I can’t do that anymore and I can’t eat that much anymore.” – 54 year old non-Hispanic black female (10.1) “Maybe just support groups in the area.” – 63 year old non-Hispanic white female (10.2) “When I was going through my little depression stage and stuff, but there was nothing available to call to get support. There were not a lot of people in my community that I could even reach out to.” – 63 year old non-Hispanic white male (10.3) “Maybe I don’t know what my resources are, but you know how on television or you see where Oprah would go to…we used to call a Fat Farm…go away for a week it would be super expensive…meals and exercise were all included and you might even have a therapy session. I would like to see that become more you know accessible…” – 63 year old non-Hispanic black female |
| 10b. Education |
(10.4) “People need more education.” – 60 year old non-Hispanic black female (10.5) “I guess that’s what I would like to see in my community is more people be understanding. Just because you’re overweight doesn’t mean you brought this upon yourself…” – 45 year old non-Hispanic white male |
| 10c. Access to Healthy Food |
(10.6) “You know I often buy a lot of stuff on Amazon. It’s my favorite shopping store…and some of that stuff is reasonably priced, but all of it is not cheap at all, but I don’t have any place for local health food store of any sort.” – 55 year old non-Hispanic white female (10.7) “Other choices of food would be good. I mean there are a couple of stores nearby. There is a Tom Thumb and that’s pretty much it in terms of better choices of food or places to buy from. More foods offered would be nice, but there are very few…” – 52 year old non-Hispanic black male (10.8) “I’m in a town that has 3 or 4 sit down restaurants that are not fast food. That’s it. There is not a lot of options here. The rest are fast food…we have three grocery stores in the city and I sometimes have to go to different ones to buy what I’m looking for on sale because it’s expensive to buy healthy food.” – 55 year old non-Hispanic white female (10.9) “…recently I was at Sam’s I guess yesterday or two days ago and they had 90% or a 93% lean ground beef, but it was expensive. So it is offered, but to even get to Sam’s is like 20 miles away. So maybe if I could have that at the local Wal-Mart which a lot closer only three or four miles away. If they offered the same 93% lean meat that would be nice, but they don’t.” – 52 year old non-Hispanic black male (10.10) “I would say work on our choices in our break areas. The healthy ones are expensive, but I think that I don’t know if I can blame anybody for that, that’s kind of the nature of things that are more natural tend to spoil sooner so they are more expensive to stock, but I wish there were more healthy food choices than in our break area.” – 54 year old non-Hispanic white female |
| 10d. MBS-Friendly Portion Sizes |
(10.11) “Like they have a menu where you have appetizers and then the menu with small bites hey have their regular menu. Well sometimes the appetizers and small bites are still too much. So it would be great if they had a little another subsection for us.“ – 63 year old non-Hispanic black female (10.12) “A lot of places don’t support people like us because you know they won’t let me buy a child’s plate because they have it defined by age.” – 61 year old non-Hispanic black female (10.13) “Not everybody wants an oversized serving of food.” – 61 year old African American female (10.14) “I just wish more of them would just do it. Give us the smaller portions. Even if its $2 more than the kid’s meal or whatever. I wish they would do it.” – 62 year old non-Hispanic white female |
| 10e. Access to Exercise Facilities |
(10.13) “My community doesn’t have side walks. They have a park, a nice park which is about a couple of miles from my house and I feel like I’m playing chicken with traffic when I walk to the park. So walking trails or sidewalks, a bike trail, things of that nature….” – 49 year old non-Hispanic black female (10.14) “It’s pretty industrial and there’s not a lot of area around here, but I would like to walk. So right after surgery I was walking five miles a day because my schedule change and I’m a little bit more restricted on my time period of being able to get out and go walking. A lot of my walking ends up being in just the parking lot.” – 66 year old non-Hispanic white female (10.15) “I live in the country so I’m in a small town so it would, you know, if there was more places to work out or even if someone would start a workout group.” – 48 year old non-Hispanic white male (10.16) “…I like to run, but I can’t run in my neighborhood because a lot of my neighbors they don’t have a dog fence so that dog can get out the yard…they will chase you if you’re running. Every few blocks or so I would encounter a dog that will run after you.” – 49 year old non-Hispanic black female |
*
Note: The numbers in parentheses are for text references. Italicized text next to each number are direct quotes from participants.
MBS – metabolic and bariatric surgery