Prepregnancy exposure to dietary arsenic and congenital heart defects.

Introduction: Arsenic crosses the placenta and accumulates in fetal tissues. In the United States, diet is the predominant route of arsenic exposure, but epidemiologic data are sparse regarding this exposure and development of birth defects. Using data from a large case-control study, we explored associations between maternal dietary arsenic exposure and congenital heart defects (CHDs), the most prevalent birth defects.

Home Cooking Quality Assessment Tool Validation Using Community Science and Crowdsourcing Approaches.

Objective: To refine a measure of home cooking quality (defined as the usage level of practices with the potential to influence the nutrient content of prepared foods) and conduct a construct validation of the revised tool, the Healthy Cooking Questionnaire 2 (HCQ2).

Design: Two validation approaches are described: (1) a community science approach used to refine and validate Healthy Cooking Questionnaire (HCQ) constructs, and (2) responses to the revised HCQ (HCQ2) in a sample of Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) workers to determine questionnaire comprehension.

Setting: The Community Scientist Program at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center facilitated discussion groups to refine the HCQ questions and validate constructs.

Outcomes of a Community-Wide Health Intervention in a Low-Income, Primarily Hispanic Community: The Go! Austin/Vamos! Austin (GAVA) Initiative.

Objectives: To describe outcomes of a 4-year physical activity (PA) and nutrition intervention (2013-2017) in Dove Springs, a low-income urban community in Texas.

Method: Go! Austin/Vamos! Austin is a place-based intervention targeting the built and social environments of PA and nutrition. Baseline and follow-up measures related to PA and nutrition were obtained from 357 parent-child dyads (final = 236) in the intervention community and a control community.

Impact of a Pilot School-Based Nutrition Intervention on Fruit and Vegetable Waste at School Lunches.

Objective: To determine the preliminary impact of the Brighter Bites nutrition intervention on decreasing fruit and vegetable (F&V) waste at school lunches among fourth- and fifth-grade children.

Method: This was a nonrandomized pre-post-controlled study in Houston and Dallas, TX. Two schools received the Brighter Bites intervention (n = 76), and 1 comparison school (n = 39), during the 2017-2018 school year.

The association between sensation seeking and e-cigarette use in Texas young adults: A cross-sectional study.

Objective: To examine the associations between sensation seeking and ever and current e-cigarette use in Texas young adults (18-29 years old). Current cigarette use was examined as a potential effect modifier of the associations.

Participants: Participants included college students enrolled in four-year and two-year colleges in four metropolitan areas in Texas (n  =  5,418) who completed the survey between November 2014 and February 2015.

The Importance of Mid-to-Late-Life Body Mass Index Trajectories on Late-Life Gait Speed.

Background: Prior studies suggest being overweight may be protective against poor functional outcomes in older adults.

Methods: Body mass index (BMI, kg/m2) was measured over 25 years across five visits (1987-2011) among Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Study participants (baseline Visit 1 n = 15,720, aged 45-64 years). Gait speed was measured at Visit 5 ("late-life", aged ≥65 years, n = 6,229).

Advocacy, Efficacy, and Engagement in an Online Network for Latino Childhood Obesity Prevention.

Salud America! is a national network created to engage Latino researchers, health professionals and community leaders in actions to reduce Latino childhood obesity. An online survey of 148 Salud America! network members investigated relationships between (1) their levels of engagement with the network, (2) self- and collective-efficacy, and (3) behavioral intentions to engage in advocacy for policies that can help reduce Latino childhood obesity. Analyses of these data found that higher levels of Salud America! engagement was associated with collective-advocacy efficacy-greater confidence in organized group advocacy as a way of advancing policies to reduce Latino childhood obesity.