Dr. Sidahmed?s long-term career goal is to become an independent academic investigator with interdisciplinary expertise in nutritional epidemiology and cancer health disparities. Her key skills in nutrition and foundation in epidemiology, biostatistics, and health disparities provide an ideal springboard. This Diversity Supplement training plan will allow her to advance her training to integrate and master these disciplines skills and forge her own unique pathway. The proposed project focuses on the role of diet on obesity and prostate cancer (CaP) risk and survival. CaP is the most common cancer globally in men of African descent, especially in Sub-Saharan (SSA) region, disproportionally represented in this population compared with men of other races or ethnicities. Interestingly, these regions have long grappled with communicable diseases and now face an epidemic of non- communicable diseases, such as CaP, creating a double burden of diseases. This double burden of diseases within SSA may be attributed to economic development, and changes in lifestyle factors, including dietary behaviors. Moreover, little is known about the role of diet and nutrition on CaP in SSA; no study has precisely assessed the dietary intake among adult African men, including ones with CaP. Therefore, this project seeks to test the feasibility and validity of the food frequency questionnaire (FFQ), which was developed by the AFRICA/HSPH Partnership for cohort research and training within SSA countries (PaCT) to identify dietary patterns associated with obesity and risk and survival of CaP. The plan for Dr. Sidahmed for career development is to: 1) acquire advanced training in the fields of nutritional cancer epidemiology and health disparities; and 2) obtain new training in the field of global nutrition and establishing international collaboration by designing cultural dietary instruments and training a new generation of professionals to implement these tools in a global setting. In addition to achieving her career goals, she will utilize dietary and FFQ data, collected from cases and controls recruited from the Men of African Descent and Carcinoma of the Prostate (MADCaP), to accomplish the following aims:
Aim 1 : To modify and adapt food frequency questionnaire (FFQ) that was developed to assess dietary intake in SSA populations for MADCaP study centers.
Aim 2 : Assess the validity of this modified FFQ to identify the main dietary patterns among African men, and to examine association between these patterns and prostate cancer risk.
Aim 3 : To investigate associations between dietary factors collected from cases and controls using the MADCaP questionnaires and prostate cancer risk. In summary, with newly acquired competencies during the the diversity supplement training, Dr. Sidahmed will be able to apply for a K01 career development award and later pursue a multidisciplinary R01 grant to conduct dynamic research in more diverse communities.
Developing regions, such as SSA, are facing a double burden of communicable (CDs) and (NCDs) noncommunicable diseases, including prostate cancer (CaP) the most common cancer in men of African descent worldwide. The influences of diet on incidence of CDs is well established in Western countries; however, the role of diet on these diseases has not been well explored in SSA, as no work has been conducted to precisely assess dietary intakes of African men to study dietary impact on CaP. Therefore, the long-term goal of this proposed study is to adapt and validate a comprehensive FFQ questionnaire to assess the long-term dietary intake of SSA men and understand the role of diet on disease outcomes, thus reducing the disproportionate burden of CaP on these populations.
