USC, CHLA Establishing Center To Improve Latino Health In SoCal

LOS ANGELES —University of Southern California and Children's Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) announced last week that they had won a $24.5 million National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant to establish a center aimed at improving Latino health in Southern California. The institute is aimed specifically at fighting obesity and related chronic disease in Latino children and families across the region, representatives from the project said.

According to a release, the new center will establish a consortium that brings together universities, hospitals and community groups to study how factors like early-life nutrition, environment and other social factors play a role in children being at risk for obesity-related chronic diseases the rest of their lives.

The center is the brainchild of Michael Goran, a professor of pediatrics at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and the director for diabetes and obesity at the Saban Research Institute at CHLA.

"All the chronic diseases of adulthood, the main killers, those risk factors start getting established in early life, probably even before birth," Goran said. "That process is more pronounced among Latinos. For example, by 2 years of age, Latinos have much higher prevalence of obesity, are more insulin resistant and already have much higher risk factors for diabetes."

Goran will co-lead the project with Lourdes Baezconde-Garbanati, a tenured professor in the department of population and public health services at the Keck School of Medicine.

According to those running the project, the center will study the viability of initiatives like, "food prescriptions," which are programs that include affordable grocery delivery and meal plans tailored to Latino culture, and programs designed to reduce the consumption of sugary drinks in women and infants.

Studies in this new center will utilize state-of-the-art methods for robust clinical assessments, organizers said.

Research teams from University of California, San Diego and Kaiser Permanente Southern California Health System also are expected to be involved in the project.

Meanwhile, promotores de salud, or community health workers, will disperse the center's findings.

"Parents are always very eager to do what they can to improve the health of their children, but interventions can't be one-size-fits-all," Baezconde-Garbanati said. "What's going to make these interventions easy to adopt is they are very culturally-specific and language-specific. They are developed with community input, and that makes all the difference."

Joining Goran and Baezconde-Garbanati in the program will be an "all-star team" that includes: Donna Spruijt-Metz, a research professor of psychology from USC, Michele Kipke, a professor of pediatrics at the Keck School of Medicine and vice chair of research within the Department of Pediatrics at CHLA, Kerri Boutelle, a professor of pediatrics and psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego and Deborah Cohen, a research scientist with the Kaiser Permanente Southern California Health System, to name a few.

"This exciting partnership with USC, CHLA and other institutions across the region reflects our international expertise in childhood obesity and our very strong commitment to improving the health of economically disadvantaged and racially diverse populations in Los Angeles," said Ishwar Puri, vice president of research at USC. "This perfect marriage of leading biomedical researchers, health organizations and community stakeholders will lead to significant progress in improving community health."