$1.7 Million Grant to Prevent Obesity in Children |
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October 21, 2014, Volume 61, No. 10 |
More than one third of children and adolescents in the United States are overweight or obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In a first-of-a-kind study, investigators led by Tanja Kral, associate professor of nursing, will identify obesogenic eating phenotypes in children in order to move primary obesity prevention strategies in a new direction. The study will use an integrative approach to concurrently study select eating behaviors under states of hunger and satiety and to assess the impact of short-term appetite and intake regulation on longer-term weight outcomes in normal-weight and obese children, ages seven to nine, who are at high or low risk for obesity on the basis of a family history of obesity.
Dr. Kral has been awarded $1.78 million from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases for her study, “Eating Phenotypes for Childhood Obesity in the Context of Familial Obesity Risk.” Her co-investigators for this study are Jennifer Orlet Fisher, interim director of the Center for Obesity Research and Education at Temple University and Renee Moore, associate professor of statistics at North Carolina State University.
The study will investigate whether high-risk, normal weight children are similar in their eating behaviors to low-risk, normal weight children or if they have already adopted behaviors that resemble more closely those of high-risk, obese children. The study will evaluate children’s overall appetite control to determine if these eating traits predict one-year changes in children’s BMI z-score, waist circumference and percent body fat. The study will also assess if there is a difference in susceptibility of children eating in the absence of hunger if they are presented with healthier snacks like fruit and will also determine the relationship between children’s home food environment, their eating phenotypes and weight change.
The knowledge gleaned from this research can be used to design personalized behavioral interventions for children who are at greatest risk for obesity that target the individual components of the behavioral phenotype.
Dr. Kral serves as an associate director of the Biobehavioral Research Center (BRC) in Penn’s School of Nursing and is a faculty member of the Center for Weight and Eating Disorders (CWED) and a fellow at the Center for Public Health Initiatives (CPHI), the Center for Health Behavior Research (CHBR) and the Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics (CHIBE) at the Leonard Davis Institute (LDI) of Health Economics in Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine.
Her research focuses on the cognitive, sensory and nutritional controls of appetite and eating in children and adults and their relevance to obesity, with specific research attention devoted to behavioral genetic methods to identify familial risk factors for overeating. In particular, her research assesses how familial predispositions to leanness or obesity interact with environmental factors, such as the omnipresence of palatable, energy-dense foods, to produce individual differences in energy intake regulation.
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