During my freshman year at Hunter College, I became involved with Weill Cornell Medical College Office of Community Service’s program Motivating Action Through Community Health Outreach (MAChO), which is a dual mentoring and research program based in East Harlem that works with families to promote healthy lifestyles. The project was developed by both undergraduate and medical students to motivate children and parents from low-income neighborhoods, who are at-risk or already are suffering from obesity, to take control of their health through exercise, personal development and basic physiology science workshops. This year marks my fourth year of involvement with the program and having strong nutritional knowledge has become a part of my core values.
The program began as a small grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to plant the seed for an exercise and nutrition program that directly combated obesity, which leads to numerous secondary diseases including diabetes, sleep apnea, and cardiovascular disease, and stands as the leading global preventable cause of death. Medical students from Weill Cornell recruited volunteers from all academic and professional backgrounds who ranged from lawyers to nutrition masters students to pre-med undergraduates. The workshops in the program’s curriculum were designed by volunteers who had teaching backgrounds, and the program is working towards acquiring Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval to conduct this necessary research and test the efficacy of the program. The research would examine if participants experience an increase in endurance, weight loss and overall self-satisfaction as a result of participating in the program.
This program has inspired me to realize the immense importance translational research — the utilization of basic science findings to create remedies for problems in human life — plays in improving human lives. Like MAChO, numerous programs have attempted to provide grassroots medical and educational resource support for vulnerable communities aimed towards encouraging enduring healthy living habits. The understanding of obesity’s impact on the sociological, psychological and medical established understandings encompasses MAChO’s interdisciplinary approach to battle the obesity epidemic.
The path to lasting progress and impact is extensive. Basic science discoveries must manifest economic, medical, social and political interest in potential application to human wellbeing and then, the theoretical application of the discovery must tested on animal and human subjects. If successful, the next step is to commission these discoveries to the masses through media and policy creation. Constantly gauging for efficacy is necessary to ensure that the policy is fulfilling its intended purpose.
Fortunately, government bodies and the scientific community are working together to make scientific findings more accessible to the public. The National Institute of Health invested $843 million towards obesity research in 2013, with grant titles specifically funding “Translational Research to Improve Obesity and Diabetes Outcomes” and “Time-Sensitive Obesity Policy and Program Evaluation”. This past summer, Virginia Tech hosted the “How Can Translational Research Solve the Obesity Epidemic” conference, and earlier this year Eureka Science hosted the “ First Global Diabetes and Obesity Translational Medicine Conference” in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
Clearly, this is a hot button issue and people are taking note of and highlighting how imperative the work that is being done is applied to our global community. With approximately one out of every three people overweight or obese, obesity is taking a toll on society, with healthcare costs for obesity-related diseases at all-time high and economic productivity severely reduced. The global community must invest in efforts to secure effective cures and policy strategies to ameliorate the obesity crisis.
