DOH Grants Family Medicine $1.33 Million for Pediatric
Obesity
Prevention
Center
Josephine Connolly Schoonen, Ph.D.,R.D., top right, Director of the new Long Island Center for Pediatric Obesity Prevention, gathers with staff, interns, and Jeffrey S. Trilling, M.D., Chair of Family Medicine, at the Stony Brook Family Medicine facility in Tech Park.
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The Department of Family Medicine received a five-year $1.33 million grant from the New York State Department of Health (DOH) to create a Center for Best Practices to Prevent and Reduce Childhood Obesity. Called the
Long Island
Center for Pediatric Obesity Prevention Best Practices in Heart Links Communities, the Center is administered through SBUMC and managed by Family Medicine under Josephine Connolly Schoonen, Ph.D., R.D., Clinical Assistant Professor and Director of the Center. The new program coordinates with healthcare providers in
Nassau and
Suffolk counties to prevent, treat, and screen for obesity in women of child-bearing years, pregnant women and infants.
SBUMC is one of three institutions in the state and the only one on
Long Island to receive the grant. The two other institutions receiving grants for creating Centers for Best Practices to Prevent and Reduce Childhood Obesity are New York-Presbyterian Hospital in
Manhattan, and The Foundation for Healthy Living, a not-for-profit health group with offices in Latham and
Buffalo.
Programs through the Center will build on the Heart Links Project, a DOH-funded program since 1993 in which the Department of Family Medicine works with and recruits school districts in
Nassau and
Suffolk counties to improve the school food environment. The Center will also work in conjunction with “WIC,” a nutritional and educational supplemental food program for low-income pregnant and breast-feeding women.
Partnering agencies with the Center include the Nassau County Department of Health, Suffolk County Department of Health, Suffolk County Cornell Cooperative Extension, and Stony Brook Child Care Services. Also involved are SBUMC’s Departments of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Pediatrics, Physical Therapy and Rehabilitative Science.
NIH Awards Psychiatry Researcher $3.2 Million for Arthritis Pain Trial
Joan Broderick, Ph.D., Research Associate Professor of Psychiatry & Behavioral Science, received a 5-year $3.2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to conduct an effectiveness trial on “Coping Skills Training for Arthritis.” The trial is a collaborative effort with the SOM,
School of
Nursing and the Pain Prevention and Treatment Research Program at
Duke
University.
Previous clinical trails that have shown that Pain Coping Skills Training (CST) for arthritis reduces pain, improves physical and social functioning , increases a sense of control over the disease, and reduces psychological stress. Dr. Broderick’s trial will test an innovative healthcare model that proposes to integrate CST into patients’ community medical setting/physicians offices.
Patients participating in the program are referred through their
Stony
Brook
University internal medicine physician. Nurse practitioners are being trained to deliver a 10-session program to arthritis patients with chronic pain.
NCI Funds $4 Million Study to Identify New Risk Factors for Prostate Cancer
M. Cristina Leske, M.D., M.P.H., D.Sc, Distinguished Professor of Preventive Medicine and Ophthalmology, was awarded a $4 million grant from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to investigate and identify genetic and obesity-related factors that contribute to prostate cancer risk in men of African descent. The study duration is nearly 5 years and continues until early 2012. The study seeks to clarify the reasons for specific prostate cancer risks in African-Americans and similar populations, who are disproportionately affected by the disease.
M. Cristina Leske, M.D, M.P.H.,D.Sc
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Dr. Leske and colleagues will analyze genetic and other medical data on 960 confirmed cases and 960 controls on men from
Barbados,
West Indies. This population offers special opportunities for this research. African-Barbadans have the same ancestral origin as African –Americans and thus have similar patterns of prostate cancer, body size, type 2 diabetes and other factors To date they have preliminary data on approximately 400 cases and controls.
The primary aims of the study are to evaluate the contribution of body size to prostate cancer risk and to evaluate the relationship of prostate cancer to common genetic variants in hypothesized pathways using a staged genotyping approach. Dr. Leske’s research team is collaborating with the Translational Genomics (TGen) Research Institute, a non-profit organization based in
Phoenix, Az., and the National Human Genome Research Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, to carry out the genetic analyses for the study.
