Research News: Food & Transitions

Prenatal
Dana Dolinoy works on environmental exposures in utero; Cristen Willer on obesity & genes.

Childhood
Ken Resnicow tailors solutions for overweight kids; Betty Izumi wants kids to know farmers (and their produce!); Harvey Leo assesses food allergies; Melissa Reznar offers strategies for smart diets for kids.

Adolescence
Susan Woolford and Ken Resincow use cell phones to send messages about weight control; Karen Peterson is programming healthy eating at school; Edward Norton studies obesity and labor outcomes.

Midlife
Derek Griffith is helping men learn to eat better; MaryFran Sowers seeks improved outcomes for women during menopause; Ken Resnicow wants to tailor better food counseling; Ana Diez-Roux, Amy Schulz, and Zora Djuric explain how place matters.

To Old Age
Sung Kyun Park makes links between environment, cardiovascular disease, and the nutrients that intercede; Laura Rozek seeks soy's role in cancer prevention; UM researchers look at fast food and stroke risk; MaryFran Sowers and Peter Mancuso say fat tissue can be friend or foe.

A century ago, public health focused largely on the early stages of the human life cycle—pregnancy, infancy, early childhood—because that’s where interventions had the greatest chance of reducing morbidity and mortality. But today researchers are looking at every phase of the life course. As Karen Peterson, professor of environmental health sciences and director of the School of Public Health Human Nutrition Program, points out, environmental exposures—including nutritional interventions—at transitional periods in the human life cycle may turn out to be hugely important in lowering the risk of chronic disease and promoting healthy aging. “Any time we have a period where there are a number of risks or threats to development, it can be an opportunity to intervene,” she says.

At left, find some of the nutrition-related research underway at SPH.