Jigna Dharod
University of North Carolina at Greensboro, NC·Public Health & Epidemiology
Babies who gain weight too fast in their first months are more likely to become children with obesity. Childhood obesity is linked to type 2 diabetes, early illness and high healthcare costs.
- Fields
Public Health & Epidemiology
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
breastfeeding
childhood obesity
infant rapid weight gain
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jun 2027
What they work on
- Test whether the SMile intervention, combining cash or breast-pump incentives with peer-counselor home visits, raises breastfeeding self-efficacy and exclusive breastfeeding for six months among 120 Hispanic WIC mothers in a randomized trial.
- Test whether the SMile intervention reduces rapid weight gain and obesity risk in infants at six months, compared with a control group of Hispanic mothers enrolled in or eligible for WIC.
- Carry out a process evaluation of SMile to identify its strengths, feasibility, fidelity and ways to improve its implementation before a larger, fully powered trial.
More about the research
Feeding only breast milk for the first six months, either directly or pumped, is associated with lower risk of rapid infant weight gain and of insulin insensitivity, an early warning sign for diabetes. The open question is how to help mothers breastfeed exclusively when many combine breast milk and formula.
Why it matters
Children increasingly develop adult diseases such as type 2 diabetes, and excess weight gain in infancy is an early risk factor. If incentives and peer home visits help low-income Hispanic mothers breastfeed exclusively, this approach could reduce rapid infant weight gain and offer WIC programs a practical model for preventing childhood obesity in communities at higher risk.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Mark Feinberg
Pennsylvania State University, PA·Public Health & Epidemiology
Test the efficacy of FF+, an adapted version of the Family Foundations prenatal and postpartum class series, in a randomized trial of 250 first-time-parent military families recruited through obstetric clinics at three Military Health System hospitals.
Minghua Tang
Colorado State University-Fort Collins, CO·Public Health & Epidemiology
Determine how meat-, dairy- and plant-based complementary diets affect infant growth from 5 to 12 months in a 300-infant randomized controlled feeding trial with longitudinal growth and body composition measures.
Linda May
East Carolina University, NC·Physiology
Determine how aerobic, resistance and combined exercise during pregnancy in women with overweight or obesity affect infant heart and metabolic health and growth patterns, compared with infants of non-exercising mothers.
The school
University of North Carolina at Greensboro: 3 labs on PI Pages, $77M a year on research, 145 research doctorates a year.
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