? The escalating prevalence of obesity and its consequences is a serious and unresolved challenge. Obesity prevention and treatment have had limited success to date, in part because interventions have focused on isolated factors and adopted a """"""""one size fits all"""""""" approach. We hypothesize that obesity must be addressed within a complex, individualized system of proximate and distal biological and environmental factors using an intensive interdisciplinary approach. To be effective, such an approach requires coalescing scientists and practitioners who specialize in obesity from a broad range of perspectives and providing them with a fertile environment and infrastructure to synergize their expertise with that of investigators from other key disciplines. The long-term goal of this interdisciplinary strategy is to define effective interventions for prevention and treatment of obesity. Our vision for this NIH Roadmap planning grant is to build on the collaborative environment at UNC that includes departments that cross the Schools of Public Health and Medicine, Allied Health Sciences, and Arts and Sciences, and NIH-funded Centers that are addressing the obesity epidemic, including the Clinical Nutrition Research Center, Carolina Population Center, the Center for Environmental Health Sciences and the Lineberger Cancer Center. We plan to engage researchers from vantages such as: nutrition, epidemiology, health behavior, urban planning, health economics, physiology, psychology, genetics, and clinical medicine to develop the Inter-Disciplinary Obesity Center (IDOC). The IDOC will include leading scholars organized in seven overlapping topical clusters who will meet on a regular basis to develop a common language, identify needs, and design and plan specific research projects to achieve the Aims of the grant. In addition, we have a commitment from the University Administration to develop the mechanisms to overcome barriers to interdisciplinary programs so investigators can have the resources, time, and space to achieve the goals outlined in the proposal.
The Specific Aims of the proposal are: 1) Involve scientists with diverse perspectives and provide them with a fundamental, shared knowledge base to focus on an integrated strategy for obesity. 2) Build an interdisciplinary framework for the etiology, prevention, and treatment of obesity; and 3) Identify methodological advances needed to accelerate obesity research (biomarkers, outcome measures, assessment tools, genetic assessment, environmental assessment, mathematical models, etc.). We will apply the knowledge gained from our interdisciplinary research to achieve our long-term goal of developing novel treatment and prevention interventions for obesity. ? ?

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Center for Research Resources (NCRR)
Type
Exploratory Grants (P20)
Project #
1P20RR020649-01
Application #
6863305
Study Section
Special Emphasis Panel (ZRR1-BT-B (01))
Program Officer
Farber, Gregory K
Project Start
2004-09-28
Project End
2007-07-31
Budget Start
2004-09-28
Budget End
2005-07-31
Support Year
1
Fiscal Year
2004
Total Cost
$563,799
Indirect Cost
Name
University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
Department
Nutrition
Type
Schools of Public Health
DUNS #
608195277
City
Chapel Hill
State
NC
Country
United States
Zip Code
27599
Chiong, Charlotte M; Reyes-Quintos, Ma Rina T; Yarza, Talitha Karisse L et al. (2018) The SLC26A4 c.706C>G (p.Leu236Val) Variant is a Frequent Cause of Hearing Impairment in Filipino Cochlear Implantees. Otol Neurotol 39:e726-e730
Tennyson, Robert L; Gettler, Lee T; Kuzawa, Christopher W et al. (2018) Lifetime socioeconomic status and early life microbial environments predict adult blood telomere length in the Philippines. Am J Hum Biol 30:e23145
Ryan, Calen P; Hayes, M Geoffrey; Lee, Nanette R et al. (2018) Reproduction predicts shorter telomeres and epigenetic age acceleration among young adult women. Sci Rep 8:11100
Bethancourt, Hilary J; Kratz, Mario; Beresford, Shirley A A et al. (2017) No association between blood telomere length and longitudinally assessed diet or adiposity in a young adult Filipino population. Eur J Nutr 56:295-308
Justice, Anne E (see original citation for additional authors) (2017) Genome-wide meta-analysis of 241,258 adults accounting for smoking behaviour identifies novel loci for obesity traits. Nat Commun 8:14977
Spracklen, Cassandra N; Chen, Peng; Kim, Young Jin et al. (2017) Association analyses of East Asian individuals and trans-ancestry analyses with European individuals reveal new loci associated with cholesterol and triglyceride levels. Hum Mol Genet 26:1770-1784
Eisenberg, Dan T A; Borja, Judith B; Hayes, M Geoffrey et al. (2017) Early life infection, but not breastfeeding, predicts adult blood telomere lengths in the Philippines. Am J Hum Biol 29:
Ryan, Calen P; McDade, Thomas W; Gettler, Lee T et al. (2017) Androgen receptor CAG repeat polymorphism and hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal function in Filipino young adult males. Am J Hum Biol 29:
Wen, Wanqing; Kato, Norihiro; Hwang, Joo-Yeon et al. (2016) Genome-wide association studies in East Asians identify new loci for waist-hip ratio and waist circumference. Sci Rep 6:17958
Ehret, Georg B (see original citation for additional authors) (2016) The genetics of blood pressure regulation and its target organs from association studies in 342,415 individuals. Nat Genet 48:1171-1184

Showing the most recent 10 out of 68 publications