Emily Melnick
University of Denver, CO·Public Health & Epidemiology·Early-career
Heart and blood vessel disease, known as cardiovascular disease (CVD), is the leading cause of death in the United States, and its roots begin in early childhood. Spotting early-life risk factors could support prevention efforts that work better than those started in adulthood.
- Fields
Public Health & Epidemiology
Psychology
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
cardiovascular disease
early childhood
childhood obesity
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jun 2031
What they work on
- Test whether limited neighborhood food access at age 2 predicts less responsive parental feeding practices and less nutritious foods served at ages 3–5, using geocoded data from the ECHO and Care cohorts.
- Test whether low food access at age 2 predicts less healthy child diets and eating behaviors at ages 3–5, such as lower satiety responsiveness, meaning weaker attention to feeling full.
- Test whether limited food access predicts higher child cardiovascular risk at ages 3–5, measured by BMI, body fat, blood pressure and arterial stiffness.
- Identify the parent and child behavioral pathways that link neighborhood food access to child cardiovascular risk, using path analysis and GIS measures of nearby healthy food outlets.
More about the research
This project asks whether living in a neighborhood with poor access to healthy food shapes how young children eat and raises their CVD risk.
Why it matters
The findings could show which parent and child behaviors to target in programs that lower early cardiovascular disease risk for children in neighborhoods with limited access to healthy food. Families, pediatric clinicians and public health planners could use this to design earlier, more focused interventions that improve heart health across the lifespan.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Iana Castro
San Diego State University, CA·Public Health & Epidemiology
Map the food environment of Imperial County, California, by building a Geographic Information System (GIS) of food retailers and auditing stores in person to find gaps in healthy food access.
Tanja Kral
University of Pennsylvania, PA·Public Health & Epidemiology
Test whether a heightened drive to eat (food reward value, rapid eating and eating without hunger) predicts 1-year changes in weight and body fat in children ages 5 to 7 independently of a genetic risk score or in addition to it.
Anna Wallisch
University of Kansas, KS·Psychology·Early-career
Examine physiological synchrony, how closely parent and child body arousal track each other, using wearable biosensors during home mealtimes for children with autism and typically developing children.
The school
University of Denver: 4 labs on PI Pages, $56M a year on research, 138 research doctorates a year.
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