Preventing Childhood Obesity

By Sathya Achia Abraham

For 25 years, biostatician Shumei S. Sun, Ph.D., has been designing and analyzing longitudinal studies and randomized, controlled clinical trials of growth, body composition, obesity, cardiovascular disease and metabolic disorders in an effort to track the origins of obesity.

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Sun hopes to do her part in preventing childhood obesity by understanding the interplay between individual genetic and physiological factors, as well as familial, social and economic factors that may influence the diet and physical activity of children.

“The problem with obesity is that once it’s established, once an individual is already obese, it becomes difficult to treat. So the best strategy is to prevent obesity altogether,” said Sun, who serves as the chair of the Department of Biostatistics in the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine.

“When we think about preventing obesity, we need to think about the origins of the epidemic. It’s a very complicated issue. There is a need for further research to better understand why the epidemic of obesity has occurred, why the observed racial and ethnic disparities exist and how to reverse this unhealthy and costly situation,” she said.

Since 1985, Sun’s research has been focused on the prevention of childhood obesity. Her current research involves data mining of several long-term longitudinal studies, including the National Growth and Health Study and the Fels Longitudinal Study, to elucidate the origins of the metabolic syndrome in children and adolescents. The research is supported by federal grants from the National Institutes of Health.

By examining long-term serial data from the Fels Longitudinal Study, Sun is trying to link what changes occur in early childhood to determine how this affects an individual’s health status in adulthood. She hopes to one day develop interventions to maintain a healthy Body Mass Index, or BMI, in children.

The Fels Longitudinal Study dataset, which began collection in 1929, includes lifetime data of its participants from infancy through childhood, adolescence and into adulthood. For some individuals, the researchers have up to 120 data points. The dataset is part of the Wright State University Boonshoft School of Medicine.

Recently, Sun obtained NIH-funding for two large computer systems, called Beowulf clusters, which permit parallel computing and greatly augment the computational capacity of the Department of Biostatistics in the School of Medicine.

In other work, Sun is pursuing advanced studies of computational modeling of the obesity epidemic and to determine protective factors in childhood that delay the aging process and protect against the development of obesity, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease later in life. According to Sun, this is a “path of investigation that may someday reveal our own internal fountain of youth.” This work is also supported by the NIH. 

Prior to coming to VCU in 2007, Sun worked with both basic science investigators and clinical investigators to develop for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention the 16 US/CDC growth charts currently used in pediatric clinics to monitor growth and nutritional status of infants, children and adolescents. These growth charts are based on data generated by six National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys from 1960 through 2000.

She was also involved with the development of the national standards for the timing of sexual maturation, using probit analysis, and the development of a working definition for the metabolic syndrome in children and adolescents, using random effects models.