Faculty Mentor: Dr.
Sonia Hernandez Diaz
Graduate Student Mentor: Shakira Franco,
PhD
Program Participants:
Justine Frazier and Nicholas
Wells
Project Title: Childhood Malnutrition and Postwar Reconstruction in Rural El Salvador
Project Description: In 1998, six
years after the peace agreement that concluded the Civil War in El Salvador,
a study attempted to describe the association between the reconstruction
effort and child health in one rural area, using child nutrition as an
indicator. The hypotheses were: (1) prevalence of childhood malnutrition,
in the form of stunting, was still high even where large amounts of post-war
reconstruction aid had been received, and (2) delays in both implementation
of the post-war land transfer process and provision of basic services
to the target population were associated with child malnutrition. In this
project, students described associations between post-war social and economic
assistance programs, and child health status as reflected by nutrition
in a population of resettled rural refugees. Students used descriptive
analysis and univariate tests to evaluate associations between socioeconomic
factors and stunting, and multivariate logistic regression to estimate
adjusted odds ratios and their 95% confidence intervals.
Dr. Hernandez Diaz, Nick, Justine, and Shakira
Faculty Mentor: Dr.
Stuart Lipsitz
Graduate Student Mentor: Regginal Tucker-Seeley, PhD candidate
Program Participants:
Jennifer Tillett, Shelah
Roanhorse, and Quincy Greene
Project Title: Differences in Nutritional Intake Between Black and White Males Presenting for Prostate Cancer Screening
Project Description: Increasing evidence suggests that diet and nutrition modify the risk of each of certain cancers, and in particular, prostate cancer. In the U.S. during 1988-1992, the incidence rates of prostate, stomach, oral cancer, and lung cancer were 31%, 86%, 35%, and 48% higher in black males than white males. Although differences in other risk factors (including smoking) account for much of the racial diversity in incidence of these cancers, it is possible that some of the racial differences in cancer risk and mortality, particularly for prostate cancer, may be related to differences in nutrition. During the project, students tested for differences in reported dietary intake between black and white males who attended a prostate cancer screening using descriptive analyses including medians, non-parametric tests for differences between nutritional intake black and white males, age-adjusted medians for blacks and whites using median regression analyses.
Dr. Lipsitz, Jennifer, Quincy, Shelah, and Regginald
Faculty Mentor: Dr.
Jonathan Levy
Graduate Mentor: Lisa Baxter, PhD candidate
Program Participants: Jennifer
Lykken and Gabriel Murillo
Project Title: Indoor and Outdoor
Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon Concentrations in Urban Neighborhoods
Project Description: Asthma risks are
known to be elevated in low-income urban settings, but it is unclear what
factors explain these disparities. One hypothesized contributor is diesel-related
air pollution, of which polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are an
important constituent. A complication is the fact that people spend much
more time indoors than outdoors, and there are other sources of PAHs inside
the home, such as cooking or grilling of meat. In order to understand
which populations are highly exposed to PAHs, students evaluated the relationship
between measured PAH levels and both traffic and indoor sources. They
used descriptive statistics and univariate/multivariate regression modeling
to determine whether PAH concentrations measured outside of the home are
correlated with traffic counts, and specifically with diesel traffic,
and to determine the strength of the indoor-outdoor PAH relationship and
the potential contribution from indoor sources. Students presented their
results at the Exposure Working Group at the Harvard School of Public
Health.
Jennifer, Lisa, and Gabriel
