The University of Arizona

 

Obesity and Diabetes Focus of National Conference

Native American Research and Training Center

The UA Native American Research and Training Center gathers the nation's best to help combat a growing epidemic for American Indian youth.


By Rebecca Ruiz-McGill, University Communications
November 26, 2008

The Native American Research and Training Center at The University of Arizona's will co-host a national conference to address child obesity and diabetes in American Indians.

The Childhood Obesity and Diabetes Prevention in Indian Country 2008 National Conference will be held in San Diego Dec. 2-4. Nationally known practitioners and scholars of diabetes, sports and exercise physiology will share successful interventions being implemented in Indian country today.

The UA's Native American Research and Training Center together with the Indian Health Service, the Bureau of Indian Education, San Diego State's Active Living Research Center and the diabetes product vendor LIFESCAN are sponsoring the conference.

The Native American Research and Training Center was established in 1983 by Arizona Board of Regents and serves as a national resource for Native American communities and for people working with Native American populations, especially those with chronic diseases or disabilities.

The mission of the center is to conduct health-related research and training projects that will help improve the quality of life for Native Americans. "The center was established to address health issues affecting Native Americans, not only in Arizona but across the nation," said the center's director, Jennie Joe, a professor of family and community medicine at the UA.

The center draws attention to issues it identifies as those that are currently affecting American Indian populations or will do so in the future.

"One of the first conferences we held was in 1998 for pediatricians that focused on the issue of the increasing onset of type-2 diabetes in Native American youth and obesity. We wanted to increase awareness of this approaching epidemic and increase the number of screenings," Joe said.

The center also holds an annual youth wellness camp for type-2 diabetes patients and works to recruit Native American scholars in needed areas of research or medical practice.

UA professor of nutritional sciences Scott Going, who was recently awarded a $1.4 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to study innovative approaches to combat childhood obesity, will be a presenter at the San Diego conference.

San Diego State will present its work to create a reliable and feasible instrument for assessing physical activity associated in park and recreational community settings. This research, Joe said, will help communities develop recreational settings and activities that maximize participation and do not require a major investment.

"We are bringing in best practice models from throughout the nation and letting them tell their own stories. We then disseminate these findings to interested researchers and communities," Joe said.

© 2009 Arizona Board of Regents