Dalnim Cho
University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, TX·Public Health & Epidemiology
Some groups of people carry a far heavier load of preventable disease than others, often because their jobs, families and surroundings make healthy habits hard to keep. Physical activity and healthy eating can lower the risk of obesity, heart disease and other chronic conditions, but programs that target only individual willpower often fail.
- Fields
Public Health & Epidemiology
Psychology
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
health behavior intervention
physical activity
diet quality
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Aug 2030
What they work on
- Test the feasibility of a multi-level health behavior program for truck drivers delivered with a trucking company, measuring recruitment, retention, adherence, acceptability and fidelity.
- Gather early signals of whether the trucking program improves drivers' physical activity, diet quality, weight and waist circumference, along with the company's health climate and safety.
- Compare a family-centered lifestyle program, a survivor-only program, and a health-education control in a three-arm randomized trial for Black prostate cancer survivors, measuring physical activity and diet quality.
- Assess effects on 6-minute walk performance, quality of life and family health climate, and test theory-based mediators and moderators that explain how the family-centered program works.
More about the research
The two projects here design lifestyle programs that reach beyond the individual. One works through the employer, a trucking company. The other works through the family, for Black prostate cancer survivors and their caregivers. Both test whether changing the social setting around a person helps healthy behaviors take hold.
Why it matters
Truck drivers and Black prostate cancer survivors both face high rates of obesity-related chronic disease and early death. Programs that work through employers and families could help drivers lower their risk of heart disease, possibly making roads safer, and could help survivors avoid deadly competing conditions while lowering cancer risk in their caregivers. These studies could provide tested designs for such programs.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Carmina Valle
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC·Public Health & Epidemiology
Test whether a 6-month mHealth weight-loss program tailored to adolescent and young adult cancer survivors produces greater weight loss at 6 months than a self-guided program, in a nationwide randomized trial of 240 survivors.
Carmen Samuel-Hodge
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC·Public Health & Epidemiology
Identify which combination of four family-centered components (session number, in-person vs. online delivery, communication/conflict training, cohesion training) produces the most weight loss at 6 months, using the Multiphase Optimization Strategy (MOST).
Gayenell Magwood
University of South Carolina-Columbia, SC·Public Health & Epidemiology
Refine the iCINGS FAM intervention through interviews and focus groups with rural community stakeholders, so that it fits individual, family, community and social needs for managing illness as a dyad.
The school
University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center: 23 labs on PI Pages, $1.4B a year on research.
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