PBRC Research Wins Gold

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Released: Friday, May 27, 2005

BATON ROUGE - Two health studies conducted at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center (PBRC) recently received top-level honors from the Cooper Institute, a research-based organization designed to evaluate success potentiality of childhood obesity prevention and treatment agendas implemented by nationwide investigative associations like PBRC.

The Cooper Institute’s analysis project, Children’s Healthy Bodies Initiative, began work in March 2004, and a team of investigators contacted nearly 300 programs, interviewing 198 of them. Of that many, 150 scored either a gold, silver or bronze ranking.

Awarded a gold medal was Wise Mind, a two-year pilot study that focuses on preventing unhealthy behavior of parents and their children enrolled in grades 2 through 6th. HIPTeens, a program designed to avert further obesity in already overweight, adolescent African-American girls possessing at least one obese parent, obtained a silver medal. Scoring was based on four categories: program design, evaluation, implementation and dissemination.

Assisted by numerous faculty members and postdoctoral candidates, Donald A. Williamson, Ph.D., oversees such Health and Behavior programs of the Center.

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The Pennington Biomedical Research Center is at the forefront of medical discovery as it relates to understanding the triggers of obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer and dementia. It is a campus of Louisiana State University and conducts basic, clinical and population research. The research enterprise at Pennington Biomedical includes approximately 80 faculty and more than 25 post-doctoral fellows who comprise a network of 44 laboratories supported by lab technicians, nurses, dietitians, and support personnel, and 13 highly specialized core service facilities. Pennington Biomedical's more than 500 employees perform research activities in state-of-the-art facilities on the 222-acre campus located in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.