Publications by authors named "Shirley Beresford"

Article Synopsis
  • This study looked at how a school program about gardening and healthy eating affected the eating habits of adult family members during the COVID-19 pandemic.!
  • They found that adults who participated in the program ate more fruits and vegetables compared to those who didn’t, especially after nine months.!
  • The results suggest that the program not only helped kids but also positively influenced their families' eating habits, even during tough times like the pandemic.!
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Metabolomics has been used extensively to capture the exposome. We investigated whether prospectively measured metabolites provided predictive power beyond well-established risk factors among 758 women with adjudicated cancers [ = 577 breast (BC) and = 181 colorectal (CRC)] and = 758 controls with available specimens (collected mean 7.2 years prior to diagnosis) in the Women's Health Initiative Bone Mineral Density subcohort.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: American Indian children are at increased risk for obesity and diabetes. School-based health promotion interventions are one approach to promoting healthy behaviors to reduce this risk, yet few studies have described their implementation and fidelity. We conducted a qualitative process evaluation of the Yéego! Healthy Eating and Gardening Program, a school-based intervention to promote healthy eating among Navajo elementary school children.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Introduction: Few healthy eating, school-based interventions have been rigorously evaluated in American Indian communities. Gardening and healthy eating are priorities in the Navajo Nation. Collaborations between researchers and local partners supported the design and implementation of this project.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: To estimate the efficacy of interventions to improve healthy eating, valid measures are essential. Although simple dietary intake tools have been developed with other populations, few have been culturally tailored and assessed for validity and reliability among Navajo.

Objectives: This study aimed to develop a simple dietary intake tool tailored to Navajo culture, derive healthy eating indices, and assess their validity and reliability in Navajo children and adults and to describe the process used to develop this tool.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Studies of diet and chronic disease include a recent important focus on dietary patterns. Patterns are typically defined by listing dietary variables and by totaling scores that reflect whether consumption is encouraged or discouraged for listed variables. However, precision may be improved by including total energy consumption among the dietary variables and by scoring dietary variables empirically.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

American Indian (AI) communities experience persistent diabetes-related disparities, yet few nutrition interventions are designed for AI with type 2 diabetes or address socio-contextual barriers to healthy eating. We describe our process of adapting the evidence-based Cooking Matters® program for use by AI adults with type 2 diabetes in a rural and resource-limited setting in the North-Central United States. We conducted three focus groups with AI adults with diabetes to (i) identify Cooking Matters® adaptations and (ii) gather feedback on appropriateness of the adapted intervention using Barrera and Castro's cultural adaptation framework.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: This study was to culturally adapt a lifestyle intervention for employees’ obesity control and prevention using a participatory process, and evaluate the effectiveness of the project at worksites. Methods: A group randomized experimental study included four worksites (two intervention, two control) in the Yangtze River Delta in China was conducted. A total of 388 participants (216 in the intervention worksites and 172 in the control worksites) were finally recruited from 955 employees at the four worksites (464 in the intervention worksites and 491 in the control worksites).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Unlabelled: This project evaluated the potential efficacy of a intervention on the to increase gardening and , which are potentially important in preventing obesity and related health conditions. Rates of obesity are high among American Indians, including those living on Navajo Nation land. Eating fresh fruits and vegetables is part of healthy eating.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Genetic variation in one-carbon metabolism may affect nutrient concentrations and biological functions. However, data on genetic variants associated with blood biomarkers of one-carbon metabolism in US postmenopausal women are limited, and whether these associations were affected by the nationwide folic acid (FA) fortification program is unclear.

Objectives: We investigated associations between genetic variants and biomarkers of one-carbon metabolism using data from the Women's Health Initiative Observational Study.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: Navajo children are at increased risk for obesity, in part due to limited access to healthy foods. School garden interventions have been shown to increase access to fresh fruit and vegetables and consumption of healthy foods. Our study describes the development and pilot testing of a school garden intervention for Navajo elementary school children.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Dietary guidance emphasizes healthy dietary patterns, but supporting evidence comes from self-reported dietary data, which are prone to measurement error. We explored whether nutritional biomarkers from the Women's Health Initiative Nutrition and Physical Activity Assessment Study Feeding Study (NPAAS-FS) (n = 153; 2010-2014) and the Women's Health Initiative Nutrition and Physical Activity Assessment Study Observational Study (NPAAS-OS) (n = 450; 2006-2009) could identify biomarker signatures of dietary patterns for development of corresponding regression calibration equations to help mitigate measurement error. Fasting blood samples were assayed for a specific panel of vitamins, carotenoids, and phospholipid fatty acids; 24-hour urine samples were assayed for nitrogen, sodium, and potassium levels.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Purpose: Objective biomarkers of dietary exposure are needed to establish reliable diet-disease associations. Unfortunately, robust biomarkers of macronutrient intakes are scarce. We aimed to assess the utility of serum, 24-h urine and spot urine high-dimensional metabolites for the development of biomarkers of daily intake of total energy, protein, carbohydrate and fat, and the percent of energy from these macronutrients (%E).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: The prevalence of poor diet quality and type 2 diabetes are exceedingly high in many rural American Indian (AI) communities. Because of limited resources and infrastructure in some communities, implementation of interventions to promote a healthy diet is challenging-which may exacerbate health disparities by region (urban/rural) and ethnicity (AIs/other populations). It is critical to adapt existing evidence-based healthy food budgeting, purchasing, and cooking programs to be relevant to underserved populations with a high burden of diabetes and related complications.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Intractable public health problems are influenced by interacting multi-level factors. Dynamic research approaches in which teams of scientists collaborate beyond traditional disciplinary, institutional, and geographic boundaries have emerged as promising strategies to address pressing public health priorities. However, little prior work has identified, defined, and characterized the outcomes of transdisciplinary (TD) research undertaken to address public health problems.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Choline is important for one-carbon metabolism in the body, and this study investigates whether genetic variations affect levels of plasma choline and its metabolites among postmenopausal women.
  • The analysis involved 1,423 women, measuring plasma concentrations of several compounds linked to choline metabolism and examining genetic polymorphisms in specific genes related to this process.
  • Key findings include the identification of certain SNPs, particularly in the BHMT and BHMT2 genes, that significantly influence plasma levels of betaine and dimethylglycine, with vitamin B-12 status affecting these associations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: This analysis examined whether specific social, physical, and financial factors were associated with diet quality among older, community-dwelling women.

Methods: This cross-sectional analysis was conducted in a subset of 6,094 community-dwelling Women's Health Initiative participants who completed a food frequency questionnaire, administered from 2012 to 2013, and a self-administered supplemental questionnaire, administered approximately 1 year later. The supplemental questionnaire included five questions assessing social, physical, and financial factors related to eating.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Multiple methods of correcting nutrient intake for misreported energy intake have been proposed but have not been extensively compared. The availability of the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) data set, which includes several objective recovery biomarkers, offers an opportunity to compare these corrections with respect to protein intake.

Objective: We compared 5 energy-correction methods for self-reported dietary protein against urinary nitrogen-derived protein intake.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: The use of relative and absolute effect estimates has important implications for the interpretation of study findings. Likewise, examining additive and multiplicative interaction can lead to differing conclusions about the joint effects of two exposure variables. The aim of this paper is to examine the relationship between BMI and mortality on the relative and absolute scales and investigate interaction between BMI and age.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

To determine whether (1) participating in , and (2) adding wellness committees to increases worksites' evidence-based intervention (EBI) implementation. We developed to disseminate EBIs to small, low-wage worksites. From 2014 to 2017, we conducted a site-randomized trial in King County, Washington, with 68 small worksites (20-200 employees).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Reported relationships between frequency, type, and timing of eating occasions and obesity-risk among adults are mixed while associations with obesogenic eating behaviors remain unexplored. The Physical Activity and Changes in Eating (PACE) study was a group-randomized controlled trial to prevent weight gain among 34 small worksites in Seattle from 2005-2009. Baseline surveys assessed body mass index (BMI), obesogenic eating behaviors (e.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

We developed a measure of family obligation stress and compared its relationship to health and unmet health care needs relative to social support among a sample of US-based Latinas. Data come from a randomized controlled trial within 4 clinics to increase mammography among Latinas (n = 539). The 1-factor measure had acceptable reliability and construct validity.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: In the Women's Health Initiative Dietary Modification trial, a low-fat dietary pattern reduced deaths after breast cancer. Mortality from other cancer sites has not been reported.

Methods: A low-fat dietary pattern influence on deaths from and after site-specific cancers was examined during 8.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Concerns about reverse causality and selection bias complicate the interpretation of studies of body mass index (BMI, calculated as weight (kg)/height (m)2) and mortality in older adults. The objective of this study was to investigate methodological explanations for the apparent attenuation of obesity-related risks in older adults. We used data from 68,132 participants in the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) clinical trial for this analysis.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: Perceptions of social-contextual food environments and associated factors that influence food purchases are understudied in American Indian (AI) communities. The purpose of the present study was to: (i) understand the perceived local food environment; (ii) investigate social-contextual factors that influence family food-purchasing choices; and (iii) identify diet intervention strategies.

Design: This qualitative study consisted of focus groups with primary household shoppers and key-informant interviews with food retailers, local government food assistance programme directors and a dietitian.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF