Community violence exposure and cortisol awakening responses in adolescents who are overweight/obese.

Background: Community violence exposure has been identified as a salient environmental stressor associated with dysregulated cortisol awakening response (CAR), which may act to exacerbate hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis dysregulation observed in adolescents who are overweight/obese.

Purpose: To perform an exploratory cross-sectional analysis examining the association between community violence exposure and CAR in adolescents who are overweight/obese.

Methods: One-hundred adolescents (ages: 13-19 years; 65% female; average BMI percentile: 93.