Doctoral Training in Nutrition Epidemiology (Fellowship Award for Daisy Zamora)

The goal of this F31 award is for doctoral training for Daisy Zamora. Her research focuses on diet-induced obesity and its application to public health in both national and international settings. The research focuses on the physical and social environmental factors that play a role in the development of obesity. She will use data from the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults Study (CARDIA), a longitudinal study of the antecedents and risk factors for cardiovascular disease in a cohort of 5,115 black and white young adults aged 18-30 years at baseline (1985). Using Geographic Information Systems (GIS), a geographic link can be made between respondent residential addresses and data on environmental factors derived from a series of federal and commercial databases. Through this spatial analysis methodology, she will be able to use the CARDIA dietary history data to understand the dynamics of dietary behaviors and weight gain over time in the CARDIA cohort. The results promise to provide useful insights into the nature of the shifts in eating behavior and obesity in the U.S.

Principal Investigators: Barry M. Popkin, Daisy Zamora

Funding Source: NIH

Grant Number: 5 F31 GM075457-02

Funding Period: 08/05/05-07/31/10