A Growing Effort: Sweeping child obesity study expands, seeds new inquiries into heart health and COVID impacts A three-year-old climbs inside his very own rocket ship. In the process, he gives us data on how to prevent one of the most serious epidemics facing American children. It’s a fresh approach by a multidisciplinary team of experts at UNC Greensboro who have joined forces to combat childhood obesity. Obesity affects 14.7 million children and adolescents in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and is associated with some of the leading causes of death worldwide, including death from diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and some forms of cancer. “Once a child becomes overweight or obese, it’s very difficult to reverse that trajectory,” says Jefferson-Pilot Excellence Professor Esther Leerkes. “There’s more attention now on what you can do early in life to prevent weight problems.” Dr. Leerkes is principal investigator on the $3 million NIH-funded “iGrowUP” study, which is tracking children from ages three through five – a time in their lives when they begin developing independent selfregulatory behaviors. The study is an expansion of UNCG’s prestigious $2.8 million iGrow – Infant Growth and Development – study, which followed approximately 300 children from the womb to age two, along with their families, and broke ground as one of the first research studies to simultaneously examine the biological, psychological, and social factors that could raise obesity risk from infancy through toddlerhood. For the new project, nutrition’s Dr. Lenka Shriver, kinesiology’s Dr. Laurie Wideman and Dr. Jessica Dollar, and human development and family studies’ Leerkes are following many of the same children from the original study, now during the critical time when they start learning how to control their own behavior. The unprecedentedly detailed dataset around families and the development of healthy – or unhealthy – weights at the earliest stages of life is already producing diverse findings, but, ultimately, the researchers are focused on how they can aid families.
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uncg research spring 2024
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We could create a toolbox for parents that can be tweaked and individualized based on the child’s characteristics, the environment, and what’s going on within the family. - Dr. Lenka Shriver