Clinical and Community Human Assessment and Interventions Core

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Project Summary – Clinical and Community Human Assessment and Interventions Core The Clinical and Community Human Assessment and Interventions (CHAI) Core is the primary resource at UNC for investigators to obtain services to support etiological and behavioral research in nutrition and obesity science. The Core collaborates with research teams to enhance their methodological and technical expertise to: 1) enable efficient and expert execution of behavioral and clinical assessment protocols (anthropometric, physical, and behavioral measures), and 2) facilitate the conduct of complex intervention studies. As a shared resource, the Core enables UNC NORC members and external users to efficiently add expertise to their team, often for a short or specific duration. The Core has a well-established infrastructure that accelerates human clinical, epidemiological, and intervention research in a seamless and cost-effective manner, and that assures that scientists use up-to-date, rigorous, and reproducible methods in their science. The behavioral assessment component of the Core offers methodological expertise and services to execute the assessment of diet and physical activity in human populations. These functions assure that scientists at UNC and other institutions use the latest cutting-edge methods in their research studies, including ActiLife software and the Nutrition Data System for Research (NDS-R®) and ASA24 (NCI). The clinical assessment component of the Core provides the expertise and equipment to support clinical measures for body composition using bioelectrical impedance, BodPod and DXA, depending on the needs of the investigator. Our clinical assessment facility is equipped for clinical metabolic assessments and is complete with a metabolic cart and whole room calorimetry, examination rooms, pharmacy, phlebotomy laboratory, specimen laboratory, furnished consultation rooms, as well as a metabolic kitchen to permit precise meal preparation and delivery for innovative studies of dietary composition. The intervention component of the Core has been providing services to researchers for 15 years to develop and conduct behavioral intervention research, qualitative research, and e-health and m-health intervention development. Specifically, the intervention component offers consulting and services in behavior change intervention and decision-aid websites and applications; logos and brochures, recruitment and presentation materials; user research, such as usability testing, qualitative interviews and focus groups; tailored messaging and feedback; and responsive design for mobile technology. The intervention component provides expertise in eHealth and mobile platforms and responsive web designs.