Meet Your Neighbor

The Behavioral Nutrition Group; Children’s Nutrition Research Center; Houston, TX; USA

Pictured from left to right:  1st row: Debbe Thompson, Sheryl Hughes, Jayna Dave, Yan Liu, Ann Tzu-An Chen; 2nd row: Tom Baranowski, Janice Baranowski, Teresia O’Connor, Leslie Frankel, Karen Cullen. Not pictured: Jason Mendoza; Theresa Nicklas; Janice Stuff

The Children’s Nutrition Research Center (CNRC) is the largest center devoted to the study of child and prenatal nutrition, with its own building, partially funded by the US Dept of Agriculture. A Division in the Department of Pediatrics of the Baylor College of Medicine, CNRC is associated with the Texas Children’s Hospital (http://www.bcm.edu/cnrc/). Approximately 65 CNRC faculty scientists work on externally funded research. Thirteen CNRC scientists constitute the Behavioral Nutrition Group (BNG). BNG members work on diverse projects, almost all involving child obesity prevention. Theresa Nicklas, DrPH, a nutrition epidemiologist (not available for the picture), investigates children’s nutrient and food intake in relation to health, and interventions for dietary behavior change. Karen Cullen, DrPH, RD, a health promotion dietitian, investigates school food policy, its impact on student food consumption, and internet-based family and teen interventions. Debbe Thompson, PhD, RD, also a health promotion dietitian and expert in qualitative methods, designs and evaluates theory-based video games for their effect on children’s diet and physical activity, and develops and validates new psychosocial measures. Jason Mendoza, MD, MPH, a pediatrician-behavioral scientist (not available for the picture), designs and evaluates community- and school-based change programs, including active commuting to school and television reduction, with disadvantaged ethnic minority children. Jayna Dave, PhD, a health promotion dietitian, develops and evaluates community-based theory grounded interventions for food-insecure populations, especially in food assistance programs. Janice Stuff, PhD, a nutrition epidemiologist (not available for the picture), studies how nitrosamine compounds influence health, and dietary patterns in low income populations. Ann Tzu-An Chen, PhD, a psychometrician, and Yan Liu, MS, are the BNG biostatisticians.

Although almost everyone in the BNG has done some family research, a subgroup specializes in the family. Sheryl Hughes, PhD, a developmental psychologist, developed a seminal measure of parental feeding styles, and uses home based observations to understand family influences, especially on child food self regulation skills. Teresia O’Connor, MD, MPH, a pediatrician and behavioral scientist, focuses on how parents influence child diet, physical activity and sedentary behavior through parenting styles and practices to identify change strategies. Leslie Frankel, PhD, a developmental psychologist and a postdoctoral fellow (under Sheryl Hughes’ mentorship), brought expertise in how mothers and fathers socialize children’s emotional expressivity, and wishes to understand how these interactions influence children’s ability to self-regulate energy intake. Janice Baranowski, MPH, RD, a research nutritionist, and Tom Baranowski, PhD, a psychologist, design and evaluate videogames for diet and physical activity change (including video games to change parenting practices), and are searching for ways to combine biological with behavioral methods to prevent child obesity.

The latter group with Drs Nicklas and Mendoza are collaborating to host Measuring Parenting, a preconference to the ISBNPA 2012 meeting. This preconference will be different: action groups will be established to advance the state of parenting measurement through ensuing international collaborative research. Y’all come visit us in Houston May 20-22, 2012, ya hear! (http://www.iemshows.com/isbnpa2012/?show_features=1&cat_id=300).

Representative publications:

1. Baranowski T, Baranowski J, Thompson D, Buday R, Jago R, Griffith MJ, Islam N, Nguyen N, Watson KB. Video game play, child diet, and physical activity behavior change, a randomized clinical trial. Am J Prev Med. 2011 Jan;40(1):33-8.
2. Baranowski JC, Baranowski T, Beltran A, Watson KB, Jago R, Callie M, Missaghian M, Tepper BJ. 6-n-Propylthiouracil sensitivity and obesity status among ethnically diverse children. Public Health Nutr. 2010 Oct;13(10):1587-92.
3. Champagne CM, Casey PH, Connell CL, Stuff JE, Gossett JM, Harsha DW, McCabe-Sellers B, Robbins JM, Simpson PM, Weber JL, Bogle ML; Lower Mississippi Delta Nutrition Intervention Research Initiative. Poverty and food intake in rural America: diet quality is lower in food insecure adults in the Mississippi Delta. J Am Diet Assoc. 2007 Nov;107(11):1886-94.
4. Cullen KW, Watson KB, Dave JM. Middle school student school lunch consumption does not meet the new Institute of Medicine National School Lunch Program recommendations. Public Health Nutrition. 2011;14(10): 1876 - 1881
5. Cullen KW, Lara-Smalling A, Thompson D, Watson KB, Scott A, Konzelmann K. Goal attainment is related to behavioral and psychosocial outcomes among low income women participating in an Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program intervention study. Appetite 2010. Oct;55(2):305-10.
6. Dave JM, Evans AE, Pfeiffer KA, Watkins KW, Saunders RP (2010). Correlates of availability and accessibility of fruit and vegetables in homes of low-income Hispanic families. Health Education Research, 25(1), 97-108.
7. Fanger, S. M., Hazen, N., & Frankel, L. A. Peer exclusion in preschool children's play: Naturalistic observations in a playground setting.  Merrill-Palmer Quarterly (In press).
8. HEALTHY Study Group, Foster GD, Linder B, Baranowski T, Cooper DM, Goldberg L, Harrell JS, Kaufman F, Marcus MD, Treviño RP, Hirst K. A school-based intervention for diabetes risk reduction. N Engl J Med. 2010 Jul 29;363(5):443-53.
9. Hughes SO, Power TG, Papaioannou M, Cross M, Nicklas T, Hall S., Shewchuk, RM.  (2011). Emotional climate, feeding behaviors, and feeding styles: An observational analysis of the dinner meal in Head Start families.  The International Journal for Behavioral Nutrition & Physical Activity. 8:60.
10. Hurley KM, Cross MB, Hughes SO.  (2011). A systematic review of responsive feeding and child obesity in high-income countries.  Journal of Nutrition. 141(3): 495-50.
11. Mendoza, JA, Watson, K., Baranowski, T., Nicklas, T.A., Uscanga, D.K., Hanfling, M.J., 2011. The Walking School Bus and Children's Physical Activity: A Pilot Cluster Randomized Controlled Trial. Pediatrics 128, e537-e544.
12. Mendoza JA, Zimmerman F, Christakis DA.  Television Viewing, Computer Use, Obesity and Adiposity in US Preschool Children.  Int J Behav Nutr Phys Act. Sep 2007;4(1):44.
13. Nicklas TA, Goh ET, Goodell LS, Acuff DS, Reiher R, Buday R, Ottenbacher A. Impact of commercials on food preferences of low-income, minority preschoolers. J Nutr Educ Behav. 2011 Jan-Feb;43(1):35-41.
14. O’Connor, T., Hilmers, A., Watson, K., Baranowski, T., Giardino, A., Feasibility of an Obesity Intervention for Pediatric Primary Care Targeting Parenting and Children: Helping HAND. Child: Care, Health and Development. 2011 (in press).
15. O’Connor, T., Hughes, S.O., Watson, K.B., Baranowski, T., Nicklas, T.A., Fisher J.O., Beltran A., Baranowski, J.C., Qu, H., Shewchuk, R.M. Parenting practices are associated with fruit and vegetable consumption in preschool children. Public Health Nutrition. 2010.13(1) 91-101.
16. O'Neil CE, Nicklas TA, Rampersaud GC, Fulgoni VL 3rd. One hundred percent orange juice consumption is associated with better diet quality, improved nutrient adequacy, and no increased risk for overweight/obesity in children. Nutr Res. 2011 Sep;31(9):673-82.
17. Stuff JE, Goh ET, Barrera SL, Bondy ML, Forman MR. Construction of an N-nitroso database for assessing dietary intake. J Food Compost Anal. 2009 Dec 1;22(Suppl 1):S42-S47.
18. Thompson D, Baranowski T, Cullen K, Watson K, Liu Y, Canada A, Bhatt R, and Zakeri I.  Food, Fun, and Fitness Internet Program for Girls:  Pilot evaluation of an e-Health youth obesity prevention program examining predictors of obesity.  Preventive Medicine.  2008. 47:494-7.
19. Thompson D, Baranowski T, Buday R, Baranowski J, Thompson V, Jago R, and Griffith M.  Serious Video Games for Health:  How Behavioral Science Guided the Development of a Serious Game.  Simulation & Games:  An International Journal.  2010;  41:587-606.