Research/Academic Showcase

$1.5 Million USDA Grant to Fund Childhood Obesity Prevention Project in Lubbock and El Paso

An interdisciplinary team of researchers has received a $1.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to fund a project focusing on preventing and controlling childhood obesity in West Texas.

Project director for the grant is Christina Esperat, R.N., Ph.D., associate dean in the School of Nursing at the Health Sciences Center. Darryl Williams, M.D., executive director of rural health at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center El Paso, is co-director for the El Paso arm of the project. The project team, co-directed by principal investigators Du Feng, Ph.D., in Lubbock and Arthur Islas, M.D., in El Paso, includes researchers from the colleges of Human Sciences, Arts and Sciences and Engineering at Texas Tech University.

“This grant will greatly enhance our rural health and health disparities research initiatives,” Esperat says. “This is a true example of community-based participatory research.”

The goal of the project, Transformacion Para Salud, is to promote a community-based approach to the prevention and control of excess weight and obesity among young children in West Texas. The project will involve three components: Comidos Para Salud (food for health), Pasos Para Salud (steps for health) and Jardines Para Salud (gardens for health). The target population will be children in kindergarten through third grade at selected independent school districts in Lubbock and El Paso.

Through community partnerships in Lubbock and El Paso, interventions will include the use of promotores (community health advocates) in intensive management of at-risk children within the target population.

“This is a very exciting project for us because it incorporates so many of our major concerns: the rising epidemic of obesity in our Border and West Texas populations, the role of promotores in providing health care and the demonstration of collaboration among the various schools of Texas Tech and our two communities,” Williams says.

The comprehensive approach using research, outreach and education in West Texas addresses one of the USDA’s strategic goals of improving the nation’s nutrition and health, Esperat says. “We feel that this activity is only the beginning in important research that will have a big impact on health disparities.”
 

Jan 15, 2020