• Future Students
• Current Students
• Alumni
• Faculty and Staff

• Arnold School Home
• Welcome
• Academic Departments
• Administrative Departments
• Office of Research
• Centers & Other Programs
• Communications
• News Archives
• Online Giving
• Contact Us

Center for Research in Nutrition and Health Disparities holds symposium as it grows research expertise

March 23, 2011

The Center for Research in Nutrition and Health Disparities at the Arnold School drew more than 110 researchers, students, and leaders of community organization and state agencies for its first comprehensive, university-wide symposium March 18.

"Healthy Eating in Context: The Role of Political, Physical, Economic, and Social Structures in Nutrition" covered topics related to the nationally compelling challenges and complexity of food access and the impact of poor diet and physical inactivity. The event included Dr. Stephen Kresovich, USC's vice president for research and graduate education, among its participants.

Kresovich, who gave opening remarks for the symposium, lauded the center's lead to bring University researchers together to tackle the health problems associated with being overweight, obese, and physically inactive. The center, which has 45 affiliated researchers from across campus, has taken the lead in an effort that is vital to the health and well-being of children and adults throughout the state and nation, he said.

"Universities work best in grass-roots initiatives," Kresovich said, praising the researchers for stepping up to the challenge to improve public health.

The research being done on nutrition and health, he said, falls into a broader category of "community health," which is one of the University's focus areas for scholarly studies.

The symposium sessions were organized as Food Environment, Access, and Behavior; Innovations in Environmental Measurement and Methods; Families and Food; and Policy Environments. Speakers included faculty representing the Arnold School, College of Social Work, College of Education, School of Medicine, College of Engineering and Computer Science, College of Arts and Sciences, and Moore School of Business.

"It excites me to come together with colleagues across campus to learn about the work that others are doing," said Dr. Darcy Freedman, a College of Social Work researcher whose areas of expertise include social and environmental determinants of Health.

Freedman is working with the S.C. Statewide Cancer Prevention and Control Program at the Arnold School to develop a farmers' market at a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) that treats low-income patients. The first market will be in Orangeburg and is scheduled to open in May, she said.

Communities with socially marginalized populations tend to have the least access to healthful foods, she said.

"Research and policy efforts are beginning to focus on improving access to healthy foods within community environments," she said, although little theory is available to guide this work.

Improving healthy eating could be right at a person's fingertips.

Dr. Kuldar Taveter, a Fulbright Scholar from Estonia who is visiting the College of Engineering and Computer Science, is studying methods to process nutrition information by "intelligent" digital assistants, called agents, that would run on consumers' handheld digital devices, such as cell phones, PDAs and iPhones. These agents would read the price and nutritional information of food items, he said.

By bringing these facts literally to the hands of customers while they are shopping, he said, could encourage more healthy eating habits.

A better of understanding of nutrition and health is coming from the "next generation of research," in which studies are looking at how the built environment influences dietary behavior, said Dr. Angela Liese, a faculty member in the Arnold School's department of epidemiology and biostatistics and director of the Center for Research in Nutrition and Health Disparities.

A study of eight S.C. counties – Richland, Chester, Lancaster, Fairfield, Kershaw, Calhoun, Clarendon and Orangeburg – examined how location and number of stores and restaurants affected food selection.

"What determines where you shop?" Liese asked, as she discussed the role of distance and store types (supermarket, convenience and discount stores) on consumer decisions affecting nutrition.

Among the study's findings: Behaviors happen in a combination of settings, including local/area restaurants and grocery stores, as well as an individual's home. The study also found that the majority of people do not shop at the supermarket closest to their homes.

Dr. Edward Frongillo, chair of the Arnold School's department of health promotion, education, and behavior, led a provocative discussion on food insecurity among families with children.

A study by Michael Burke using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort, a nationally representative sample of U.S. school children, looked at food insecurity patterns in four grades – kindergarten, third, fifth and eight grades.

The results found that 35 percent of households were food insecure in at least one grade. Thirteen percent of households were classified as persistently food insecure. Households that were African American, had a single parents, lived in poverty, were less educated, lived in the Midwest and changed urbanicity were more likely to be food insecure.

"Children with food insecurity live adult roles," said Frongillo, noting that they try to protect younger children in the family and also protect parents by not sharing their plight with the outside world.

"Parents are often unaware of what is happening with children," he said. "Children are impacted even when parents believe they are protected."

Among the other presenters were James Hibbert and Drs. Natalie Colabianchi, Ruth Saunders, Christine Blake, Jihong Liu, Michael Beets, and Sonya Jones, all from the Arnold School; Dr. Bethany Bell of the College of Education; Dr. Dawn K. Wilson, College of Arts and Sciences; Dr. Melayne McInnes, Moore School of Business; and Dr. Kevin Bennett, School of Medicine.

Liese said she was pleased with the quality of research presented at the symposium and the enthusiasm for the program.

"This was a good first step," she said, "and I hope that a symposium like this can become an annual event for us."

Visit http://nutritioncenter.sph.sc.edu to learn more about the Center for Nutrition and Health Disparities.

      

Center has wide reach, large impact

March 23, 2011

From small beginnings come great things. -- Dutch proverb.

With only three faculty appointees and a handful of staff, the Arnold School's Center for Research in Nutrition and Health Disparities scarcely casts a shadow among its peers.

But thanks to a diverse network of people across the USC campus and elsewhere, the center has advanced the cause of research into nutrition and health disparities all out of proportion to its core size, says Dr. Angela Liese, director of the seven-year-old organization.

Liese, who became director three years ago, has a volunteer group of 45 affiliated scholars who contribute their talents and energy to the center's mission: to advance our understanding of how to improve the health of South Carolinians through nutrition.

Most of the affiliated researchers are from the Arnold School of Public Health, but Liese says others come from a wide array of disciplines including business, psychology, geography, education, philosophy, social work, women's studies and the Institute for Families in Society

The cast also includes a biology professor with a background in entomology and agriculture from Orangeburg's Claflin University.

The center was created when Arnold School leaders decided nutrition and health disparities research was needed to complement strong, long developed programs such as exercise science, she said.

Its first director was Dr. Beth Mayer-Davis, a recognized diabetes expert, now with the Department of Nutrition at the University of North Carolina's Gillings School of Public Health.

Years of work by many of her affiliated researchers were realized during a sold-out public symposium at the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center on March 18. Based on the interest in the program and the high quality of the material, Liese plans to have a similar event each year.

Dr. Sonya Jones, the center's deputy director, said years of research have provided ample evidence that poor diet and lack of exercise are behind many of the chronic illnesses threatening South Carolina's population and leading to health disparities.

Obesity dominates the list of nutrition-related problems, but high blood pressure and diabetes also rank high.

Changing the dietary habits of people is a tough job, said Jones, adding that nutrition education by itself doesn't produce results.

Developing interventions focused on the contexts in which people eat, such as with their families should be high on future research agendas, she said. For instance, programs that train parents how to manage the family's meals are an interest of some of the center's affiliated scholars.

Jones said a lot of her time has been spent studying public policies that lawmakers could use to encourage healthy eating in schools and homes.

The center provides broad support to researchers submitting grants related to nutrition or health disparities, including the preparation and review of grant proposals, financial administration for grants, manuscript preparation, data management and biostatistics support, and geographic information systems (GIS) services. The center's newsletter contains information on events of interest to researchers, as well as listings of the published papers of its affiliated researchers – a document that showcases the reach of the center and its success.

Dr. Melayne McInnes, one of the presenters at the symposium, is an associate professor of economics in the Darla Moore School of Business. Among her academic research interests are the economics of the healthcare industry, medical malpractice and the economic burden of smoking and obesity.

McInnes said she has worked off and on with Arnold School researchers for a number of years, most recently with Jones on a USDA grant involving behavioral economics.

"It was clearly a case where our interests overlapped," McInnes said. "She recruited two other people in the school of public health, and I brought along an economics colleague and we've been working as a group since. We have a small planning grant now, and working together has been terrific."