Within-partner concordance of hypertension and overweight/obesity among sexual minority couples.

PURPOSE: The role of partners on an individual's cardiometabolic risk status in same-sex relationships is underexplored to date, despite significant health disparities impacting sexual minority individuals. This study investigated cardiometabolic risk concordance in same-sex older adult couples in the United States.

METHODS

We conducted a pooled analysis of seven study waves of the University of Michigan Health and Retirement Survey (2006-2019) and estimated concordance of hypertension and overweight/obesity among same-sex couples.

RESULTS

Among 81 same-sex couples, we observed high concordance of hypertension and overweight/obesity among sexual minority male couples (39 couples, hypertension: 72.4 %, overweight/obesity: 64.2 %) and sexual minority female couples (42 couples, hypertension: 61.0 %, overweight/obesity: 35.6 %).

CONCLUSIONS

Our findings signify a need for longitudinal studies among same-sex couples to better characterize mechanisms of influence on partners' cardiometabolic health, as well as a potential role for couple-level interventions targeting cardiometabolic risk.