- March 11, 2024Source: Yale Medicine
Why Your Cardiologist May Prescribe Semaglutide (Wegovy)
- February 20, 2024Source: BNN
Alarming Rise in Childhood Obesity and Diabetes Uncovered in Samoa, Yale Study Finds
- February 06, 2024
Samoan children as young as six at risk of diabetes, Yale study shows
- February 05, 2024Source: CNN
‘It’s a new era’: Weight-loss treatments significantly lower blood pressure, studies finds
Lifestyle Factors
As many emerging economies around the world adopt Westernized diets and lifestyles, noncommunicable diseases are rising at alarming rates across the globe.
Lifestyle factors such as use of tobacco and alcohol, diet and physical activity are closely associated with myriad chronic health conditions such as cancer, diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular disease. Scientists have found, for example, that unhealthy body weight, limited physical activity and poor diets are associated with an increased incidence of 13 cancers, and an increased mortality of 14 cancers in addition to metabolic diseases.
By altering hormones, lifestyle factors also can affect energy metabolism, cellular growth, steroid metabolism, inflammatory mediation, DNA repair and immune function. In addition, malnutrition increases morbidity and mortality from infectious diseases, and can increase the severity of an infection and hinder the response to treatment.
To address these conditions, Yale School of Public Health researchers are using rigorous interdisciplinary and epidemiologic methods to understand the health consequences of nutrition, exercise, genetics, biomarkers, access to health services, community-based characteristics on disease rates and outcomes, epigenetics of obesity, lifestyle interventions in oncology care, breastfeeding and the impact of climate change, among other factors.
Recent Publications
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Nicotine & Tobacco Research
The Impact of Smoke-free Air Laws and Conventional Cigarette Taxes on Cardiovascular Hospitalizations
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American Journal of Epidemiology
Associations Between Asthma and Body Mass Index -
American Journal of Human Biology
Changing Body Norms: Samoa in 1995 and 2018 -
Nutrition Research
Skin Carotenoids are Inversely Associated with Adiposity in Breast Cancer Survivors
Centers and other resources
- Becoming Breastfeeding Friendly (BBF): A Guide to Global Scale UpThis evidence-informed initiative is designed to help countries identify the strength of their breastfeeding-friendly environment and to improve breastfeeding policies and programs.
- Center for Neuroepidemiology and Clinical Neurological Research (CNE2)CNE2 is comprised of researchers across Yale schools who have common and complementary research and methodological interests in clinical neurological research.
- Community Alliance for Research and Engagement (CARE)CARE promotes the prevention of chronic diseases by focusing on social, environmental, and behavioral risk factors.
- Samoan Obesity, lifestyle and Genetic Adaptations Study Group (OLAGA)OLAGA study group aims to understand the origins of obesity among Samoans and other Pacific Islanders to develop relevant interventions to reduce obesity and obesity-related conditions.
- Yale Cancer Center (YCC)The Center provides the best approaches for the prevention, detection, diagnosis, and treatment of cancer.
- Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center (PRC)The PRC works with community partners to develop and implement community-based approaches to prevent and control chronic diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.
- Yale Institute for Global Health (YIGH)YIGH serves as the focal point for research, education, and engagement with global partners to improve the health of individuals and populations worldwide.
YSPH Gene-Lifestyle-Environmental Interactions 2022 Research Highlights
- Obesity (Silver Spring)The protective effect of rs373863828 on type 2 diabetes does not operate through a body composition pathway in adult Samoans
- The American Journal of Human GeneticsLeveraging LD eigenvalue regression to improve the estimation of SNP heritability and confounding inflation