TLC2 focuses on child obesity
The Texas Learning and Computation Center held its Second Friday Research Seminar Series, held on the second Friday of each month during the 2007-8 school year. Dr. Alok Bhargava, UH Dept. of Economics, presented his research results into child obesity. Dr. Bhargava received a TLC2 Innovative Research Funding Award for his work on the bi-directional relationships between body weight and household food insecurity in US children.
Recent increases in obesity prevalence among children in the U.S. are
of policy concern. While significant positive associations between
households' food insecurity status and body weights have been
reported for adults, it is known from the energy physiology
literature that energy requirements depend on basal metabolic rates,
anthropometric measures, and physical activity. It is therefore
important to model the bi-directional relationships between body
weights and households' food insecurity scores especially for
children that have evolving nutrient and energy requirements.
Dr. Bhargava's research estimated dynamic random effects models for body weights and
households' food insecurity scores using longitudinal data on 7,635
children in the U.S. enrolled in 1st, 3rd and 5th grades (1999-2003)
of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten. The main
findings were:
- Physical exercise, receipt of food stamp
benefits and numbers of siblings were significantly (P<0.05)
negatively associated with body weights, while households' food
insecurity score was not a significant predictor. Moreover,
children's body weights were significantly lower in households with
higher parental education and incomes; time spent watching television
and in non-parental care was positively associated with weights.
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Models for households' food insecurity scores showed that
poverty and respondents' poor emotional and physical health
significantly increased food insecurity. Moreover, households with
children who were taller and heavier for their ages faced
significantly higher food insecurity levels.
The results underscored
the need for assessing nutritional status of children from poor
households, and for ensuring balanced school meals and higher
physical activity levels.
About Dr. Bhargava
Dr. Bhargava is a leading authority in longitudinal econometric methods and its application to problems of food, nutrition and health. Bhargava has used rigorous econometric and statiscal methods in addressing issues of under-nutrition and poor child health in developing countries, as well as obestiy in developed countries.
Dr. Bhargava has published numerous articles in health and economic journals, in addition to his book Econometrics, Statistics and Computational Approaches In Food and Health Sciences. He has worked with, among many other organizations, The World Bank, National Cancer Institute, Organization for Economic Cooperation and and Development (OECD), Asian Development Bank, World Health Organization (WHO), Pan American Health Organization, and the International Food Policy Research Institute.
He has also been a committee member for the Social Science Panel and Special Emphasis Panel of the National Institutes of Health, and the FANRP Panel of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. He is a member of the American Society for Nutritional Sciences, Econometric Society, Population Association of America and the Royal Statistical Society.
For more information, please visit:
Pictures of Dr. Bhargava's presentation can be seen at
www.tlc2.uh.edu/Gallery/showgallery.php?cat=665.
