Empowering Baltimore youth through applied research experiences to improve diet quality in older adults living in healthy food priority areas

About This Grant

Project Summary/Abstract Underrepresented groups are disproportionately impacted by nutrition-related chronic diseases. In Baltimore, a city with a majority minority population, disparities in healthy food access contribute to poor dietary intake. One third of Black residents and nearly 25% of older adults live in Healthy Food Priority Areas (HFPA), urban areas where unhealthy foods are more available than healthy foods. Common self-care tasks like food shopping, meal preparation, and cooking are also barriers to consuming a healthy diet among older adults. Poor dietary intake contributes to chronic disease risk and loss of muscle mass and strength, consequently limiting functional mobility. Ensuring that the next generation of researchers reflects the diversity of the larger population is essential to address all aspects of disparities, but there is a need to engage students at early education levels. UMB RAMP is a summer research training program that exposes high school (HS) students from historically excluded groups to translational research concepts and teaches basic lab techniques and clinical skills. Pilot data from our first cohort (86% Black) demonstrate a positive impact on HS students’ research career interest, but year-round paid experiences to engage and mentor these students in research labs are lacking for this age-group. In this phase 2 randomized controlled trial, we will determine if a 3-month virtual group nutrition education and virtual teaching kitchen cooking demonstrations paired with free produce tailored for older adults (>65 yrs) living in HFPA will improve diet and health-related outcomes compared to contact control. Our overarching hypothesis is that this intervention, personalized to include considerations of this older adult population’s barriers to consuming a healthy diet, will improve dietary quality and functional mobility while providing a paid, applied clinical research experience for HS students. Our research aims will determine the impact of the virtual intervention on diet and other health outcomes of older adults living in healthy food prior areas. The DEIA aims utilize a mixed methods approach to determine the impact of a year-long applied research opportunity on HS students from historically excluded groups' sense of belonging, confidence and motivation for pursuing undergraduate/career research experiences, and perceptions about both the aging field and the community impact of their research experience. We will also explore perceived impact from the older adult research participants related to working with young student researchers and how it may change their perceptions of research. Lack of effective interventions to improve diet quality among older urban adults represents a significant health problem. Simultaneously, workforce diversification is essential to meet growing US demands in research and biomedical science fields to address disparities in chronic disease outcomes. This project meets these demands by expanding research training opportunities for younger students to build confidence and self-efficacy that they belong in an academic research environment while providing a relatively low-cost intervention to disseminate to help narrow these gaps.