Stanford University researchers found that excess weight, high blood pressure, fat-rich diets and other indicators tended to be more common among African American and Mexican American youths than among whites, and showed up earlier in life than researchers generally believed.

At the same time, the 16% smoking rate among white teenage girls was four times that of Mexican American girls and eight times that of African American girls. The study, said to be the most thorough comparison of cardiovascular disease risk factors in youths of different ethnic groups, suggests that parents and professionals need to tailor heart-healthy messages to children. Those include encouraging more exercise, less junk food and less smoking, among other things.

Although previous studies have looked at heart disease risk factors in youths from different ethnic groups, this study is the first to directly compare whites, African Americans and Mexican Americans in a nationally representative sample. Latino groups other than Mexican Americans were not part of the study.