AN INTERDISCIPLINARY STRATEGY FOR OBESITY

本子项目是利用由NIH/NCRR资助的中心赠款提供的资源的众多研究子项目之一。子项目和研究者（PI）可能已经从另一个NIH来源获得了主要资金，因此可以在其他CRISP条目中表示。列出的机构是中心的，不一定是研究者的机构。描述（由申请人提供）：肥胖的日益流行及其后果是一个严重且未解决的挑战。迄今为止，肥胖的预防和治疗取得的成功有限，部分原因是干预措施侧重于孤立的因素，并采取了“一刀切”的方法。我们假设肥胖必须在一个复杂的、个性化的系统中解决，该系统包括近端和远端生物和环境因素，并采用密集的跨学科方法。为了有效，这种方法需要从广泛的角度将专门研究肥胖的科学家和实践者联合起来，并为他们提供肥沃的环境和基础设施，使他们的专业知识与其他关键学科的研究人员的专业知识协同作用。这一跨学科策略的长期目标是确定预防和治疗肥胖的有效干预措施。我们对NIH路线图规划拨款的愿景是建立在北卡罗来纳大学的合作环境基础上，包括公共卫生与医学院、联合健康科学学院、艺术与科学学院的部门，以及NIH资助的研究肥胖流行病的中心，包括临床营养研究中心、卡罗莱纳人口中心、环境健康科学中心和Lineberger癌症中心。我们计划在营养学、流行病学、健康行为学、城市规划、健康经济学、生理学、心理学、遗传学和临床医学等方面招募研究人员，组建跨学科肥胖中心（IDOC）。IDOC将包括由七个重叠的专题小组组成的主要学者，他们将定期会面，以发展共同语言，确定需求，并设计和计划具体的研究项目，以实现资助的目标。此外，我们还得到了大学行政部门的承诺，要建立机制，克服跨学科项目的障碍，使研究人员能够有资源、时间和空间来实现提案中概述的目标。该提案的具体目标是：1)让不同观点的科学家参与进来，为他们提供一个基本的、共享的知识基础，以专注于肥胖的综合战略。2)建立肥胖症病因、预防和治疗的跨学科框架；3)确定加速肥胖研究所需的方法学进展（生物标志物、结果测量、评估工具、遗传评估、环境评估、数学模型等）。我们将运用跨学科研究中获得的知识来实现我们开发新型治疗和预防肥胖干预措施的长期目标。

This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing the resources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. The subproject and investigator (PI) may have received primary funding from another NIH source, and thus could be represented in other CRISP entries. The institution listed is for the Center, which is not necessarily the institution for the investigator. DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The escalating prevalence of obesity and its consequences is a serious and unresolved challenge. Obesity prevention and treatment have had limited success to date, in part because interventions have focused on isolated factors and adopted a "one size fits all" approach. We hypothesize that obesity must be addressed within a complex, individualized system of proximate and distal biological and environmental factors using an intensive interdisciplinary approach. To be effective, such an approach requires coalescing scientists and practitioners who specialize in obesity from a broad range of perspectives and providing them with a fertile environment and infrastructure to synergize their expertise with that of investigators from other key disciplines. The long-term goal of this interdisciplinary strategy is to define effective interventions for prevention and treatment of obesity. Our vision for this NIH Roadmap planning grant is to build on the collaborative environment at UNC that includes departments that cross the Schools of Public Health and Medicine, Allied Health Sciences, and Arts and Sciences, and NIH-funded Centers that are addressing the obesity epidemic, including the Clinical Nutrition Research Center, Carolina Population Center, the Center for Environmental Health Sciences and the Lineberger Cancer Center. We plan to engage researchers from vantages such as: nutrition, epidemiology, health behavior, urban planning, health economics, physiology, psychology, genetics, and clinical medicine to develop the Inter-Disciplinary Obesity Center (IDOC). The IDOC will include leading scholars organized in seven overlapping topical clusters who will meet on a regular basis to develop a common language, identify needs, and design and plan specific research projects to achieve the Aims of the grant. In addition, we have a commitment from the University Administration to develop the mechanisms to overcome barriers to interdisciplinary programs so investigators can have the resources, time, and space to achieve the goals outlined in the proposal. The Specific Aims of the proposal are: 1) Involve scientists with diverse perspectives and provide them with a fundamental, shared knowledge base to focus on an integrated strategy for obesity. 2) Build an interdisciplinary framework for the etiology, prevention, and treatment of obesity; and 3) Identify methodological advances needed to accelerate obesity research (biomarkers, outcome measures, assessment tools, genetic assessment, environmental assessment, mathematical models, etc.). We will apply the knowledge gained from our interdisciplinary research to achieve our long-term goal of developing novel treatment and prevention interventions for obesity.