Monthly Archives: June 2014

General — No Comments
21
Jun 14

Fellows attended Forefronts in Portion Size Conference

In May 2014 COPT Fellows, Laural English and Samantha Kling, were invited by their mentors, Dr. Kathleen Keller and Dr. Barbara Rolls, to attend the Forefronts in Portion Size Conference in Philadelphia. They travelled together with an interning fellow in Dr.Keller’s lab, Marlou Lesshecht from Wageningen University in The Netherlands. Dr. Jennifer Fisher from The Center for Obesity Research and Education at Temple University hosted this conference with Dr. Marion Hetherington from the University of Leeds.

Left to right: Samantha Kling, Marlou Lesshecht, Laural English

Left to right: Samantha Kling, Marlou Lesshecht, Laural English

The event started with a networking dinner at Zahav, a modern Israeli restaurant in Philadelphia’s Old City area. The dinner was an opportunity to connect with the experts in a casual and intimate setting (the food was amazing).

PS_Zahav

The first conference session included Dr. Leann Birch from the University of Georgia, Dr. Tanja Kral at the University of Pennsylvania. COPT co-program director director, Dr. Keller presented preliminary results on neural mechanisms of portion size in children.  Being able to field questions about Laural’s dissertation project from experts was very beneficial. Dr. Susan Johnson shared insightful qualitative data related to “parenting decisions about portion sizes for their children and what is the right amount.” After lunch, Dr. Kirsten Davison at Harvard spoke on how parents are managing portion sizes of children’s snacks and Dr. Tom Robinson on how portion control fits into interventions.

PS_Breakfast

Led by Dr. Michael Goran, and Dr.Sylvia Rowe, the round table discussion included Dr. Gary Foster, Dr. Barbara Rolls, Dr. Maureen Black and Dr. Dennis Bier, who discussed research needs and implications for developing effective and usable strategies to manage portion size. Some of the points raised were 1. Settings in which portion size is most important; 2. Energy density (kcal/g of food) and portion size go hand in hand; 3.Critical periods of portion size susceptibly, 4. Appropriate or “right-sized” portions for different populations. Participation was encouraged so Laural and Sam were able to engage in a few discussion points as well. Reports from the sessions are in preparation for publication in early 2015.

 

General — No Comments
09
Jun 14

Latent Class Analysis workshop through Statistical Horizons

Katherine Balantekin and Chelsea Rose participated in a Latent Class Analysis (LCA) two-day workshop taught by Stephanie Lanza from Penn State’s Methodology Center through Statistical Horizons. Statistical Horizons offers seminars on a variety of different statistical techniques like mediation & moderation, structural equation modeling, meta-analysis techniques, and many more. These seminars are offered in locations across the country as well as international sites, such as the upcoming longitudinal data analysis using Stata seminar in Stockholm, Sweden on August 12-15.

Katie and Chelsea both benefitted greatly from this seminar because they both plan to use LCA in their dissertation work. They both highly recommend Statistical Horizons to other students and professionals who want to quickly, but still effectively, learn a new statistical method. Below is a link to their homepage with a list of upcoming seminars:

http://www.statisticalhorizons.com/

Conferences — No Comments
04
Jun 14

Society for Prevention Sciences 22nd Annual Meeting

I (Jacinda Li) recently attended the Society for Prevention Research 22nd Annual Meeting in Washington DC during May 27-30, 2014.

At the meeting, I presented my poster, “Parental management of lifestyle behaviors associated with childhood obesity: Associations with child weight-status and behaviors in middle childhood,” in which I presented the logic model that I made for the parent-focused lifestyle intervention for childhood overweight and obesity, Lifestyle Triple P. Please contact me at jcl270@psu.edu if you are interested in having a copy of this poster.

The conference also provided many opportunities to learn new, valuable skills. During the pre-conference workshop, I learned how to conduct a cost analysis for preventive interventions (it’s actually not as daunting as it seems). I also learned innovative methodological approaches to prevention, such as conducting power analysis for cluster randomized trials and the extended age-cohort design.

One of my favorite symposiums was the session, “Early Childhood Intervention Strategies to Promote Health and Reduce Risk for Obesity,” chaired by Aleta Meyer. Dr. Kirsten Davison opened the session by presenting an introduction to the childhood obesity problem and etiology. She emphasized that sleep was an understudied area. Dr. Julie Lumeng presented evidence regarding the link between stress exposure and obesity in adults and children using physiological measures of stress reactivity, and shared an overview of a current intervention trial to test whether intervention that improves child self-regulatory capacity can prevent obesity in Head Start children. Finally, Dr. Alexandra Adams shared her research on a family-based healthy lifestyle intervention in multiple American Indian communities that follows a socio-ecological approach and incorporates trauma framework that focuses on addressing multiple unhealthy activities as well as unhealthy relationship to multiple substances. This symposium was particularly inspiring to me because I am exploring the possibility of incorporating a trauma-informed approach to the treatment and prevention of childhood obesity for application with families with disadvantaged backgrounds.

Overall, I found the experience of attending this meeting to be highly valuable and would recommend it for anybody working in prevention and intervention research.

-Jacinda Li

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