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Project Title

Prospective Research On Stress, Parenting, Environment, and Early Childhood growth Trajectories (PROSPECT) Study

Project Summary

Racial/ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in childhood obesity are a major public health problem. Parental feeding practices and characteristics of the home environment both contribute to obesity risk, yet few studies have used validated measures to describe the nutritional quality, amount, and accessibility of food in the home. Further, existing measures have limited generalizability to low income and racial/ethnic minority populations. We propose to characterize the home food environment and its relationship to growth trajectories from 0-2 years in a sample of low-income families recruited in Baltimore. The proposed research would augment the PREDICT study (https://predict.study/), which focuses on the gut microbiome), in a way that informs testable hypotheses regarding potential mediators of the relationship between the home food environment, parental feeding practices, and weight gain using a mixed methods approach.

The goals of the proposed research are to examine the relationship of family-, household-, and neighborhood-level exposures with growth trajectories among 0-2-year-olds; to facilitate future research exploring the role of epigenetic changes in explaining childhood obesity disparities; and to inform the development of effective policies and programs to prevent childhood obesity and eliminate racial/ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in childhood obesity risk.

Project Details

 
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Principal InvestigatorFunder
Showell, Nakiya – MD, MPH, MHSJohn Hopkins University Department of Pediatrics
DepartmentProject Start Date
Pediatrics, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
Gynecology and Obstetrics, Johns Hopkins Unviersity School of Medicine
6/21/2018
Co – Principal InvestigatorProject End Date
Bossano, Carla – MD6/21/2021
Other Co – Principal InvestigatorsTeam Members
Johnson, Sara – PhD, MPH
Polk, Sarah – MD, Sc.M
Thornton, Rachel- MD, PhD
Ansah, Rosemary – MD, MPH
Ashebo, Leteme
Flessa, Sarah
Kauffman, Hunter
Olson, Melissa – PhD
Rincon Caicedo, Mariana
Singh, Abhay
You, Susan
Perez, Stephanie- BA
Mullins, Alexa- MD Candidate

 

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