Social and Demographic Predictors of Nutritional Risk: Cross-sectional Analyses From the UAB Study of Aging II.

Social factors may disparately affect access to food and nutritional risk among older adults by race and gender. This study assesses these associations using the Mini Nutritional Assessment among 414 community-dwelling persons 75+ years of age in Alabama. Descriptive analyses on the full sample and by African American men, African American women, white men, and white women showed that mean scores for the full Mini Nutritional Assessment differed by groups, with African American men and African American women having the highest nutritional risk. Multivariable analyses indicated that social factors affect nutritional risk differently by race and gender. Nutritional risk interventions are warranted for older adults.