Institute for Advancing Health Through Agriculture

Advancing Health through Agriculture

Healthy Living

Institute for Advancing Health Through Agriculture Awarded $2 Million in Funding to Support Social and Behavioral Healthy Living Research

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Grants awarded for evaluating middle school student nutrition and physical activity as well as and Produce Prescription programs, among others

COLLEGE STATION, Texas, May 23, 2023 – New research initiatives at the Texas A&M Institute for Advancing Health Through Agriculture (IHA) have received more than $2 million in funding to support social and behavioral healthy living research.

The researchers’ projects aim to improve physical activity and healthy eating habits while promoting positive youth development, especially in economically disadvantaged middle schools. Another project will look at how community cafes – non-profit restaurants that use a pay-what-you-can system – influence healthy diets and food security.

IHA researchers Rebecca Seguin-Fowler, Ph.D.; Alexandra L. MacMillan Uribe, Ph.D.; Jacob S. Szeszulski, Ph.D. and Chad Rethorst, Ph.D. have received funding from four sources: the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Downstate Health Sciences University and Texas A&M AgriLife Research (Hatch grants).

Patrick Stover, Ph.D., director of the IHA, said the newly awarded grants reflect the importance of the Institute’s forward-looking work.

“It’s our mission to reduce diet-related chronic diseases and consequently healthcare costs through the power of agriculture in a way that considers the environment and our economy,” said Stover. “Doing so requires community-engaged multisector partnerships, as exemplified in this new portfolio of funded projects across the IHA Healthy Living research team.”

Strong Teens for Healthy Schools

Among the awards is a project led by MacMillan Uribe, Szeszulski and colleagues, titled, “Strong Teens for Healthy Schools Change Club: A Civic Engagement Approach to Improving Physical Activity and Healthy Eating Environments.” MacMillan Uribe and Szeszulski were granted more than $300,000 annually for the next five years from NIH’s National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities. Seguin-Fowler and Rethorst serve as co-investigators on the team. Working in partnership with Cooperative Extension as well as 4-H staff, school educators and middle school students, this project will refine the Strong Teens curriculum for delivery and evaluate its effectiveness in improving physical activity, nutrition and positive youth development-related behaviors and environmental outcomes in economically disadvantaged middle schools.

Produce Prescriptions for Healthy Blood Pressure
MacMillan Uribe and colleagues, including Seguin-Fowler who serves as associate director for Healthy Living at the IHA, were awarded $500,000 from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture as part of its Gus Schumacher Nutrition Incentive Grant Program (GusNIP). GusNIP focuses on programs that seek to improve dietary health and food security through the consumption of fresh produce as well as reducing the need and consequential costs of healthcare use.

MacMillan Uribe’s project, “The Produce Prescription for Healthy Blood Pressure Program to Manage Hypertension Among West Dallas, Texas Residents,” will run through September 2025.

“The goal of this project is to understand whether a produce prescription program can improve blood pressure levels among adults with hypertension living in West Dallas, Texas, a largely underserved community,” said Dr. MacMillan Uribe. “We anticipate that blood pressure levels and the frequency and cost of using healthcare will decrease.”

Additional Awards
MacMillan Uribe was also awarded $12,000 from the Program to Increase Diversity Among Individuals Engaged in Cardiovascular Health-Related Research team (PRIDE-CVD) at Downstate Health Sciences University in New York. In collaboration with Szeszulski and Lori Borchers, Ph.D. at Texas Christian University, this project will look specifically at community cafes, which are non-profit restaurants that operate on a pay-what-you-can system. They are hoping to learn more about how these community cafes influence food security and diet quality among patrons with food insecurity.

Texas A&M AgriLife Research (Hatch awards) were also granted to Szeszulski, MacMillan Uribe and Rethorst, totaling $35,000. This support will enable them to conduct data analyses on existing projects so they can apply for additional grants that support the mission of Healthy Living to promote health, reduce chronic disease and advance health equity through the development, evaluation and dissemination of community-engaged intervention programs.

About Texas A&M Institute for Advancing Health Through Agriculture
The IHA relies on funding from federal, state and other entities to achieve its mission. Objectives include advancing research, knowledge and practice as well as informing science-based policy that connects and enhances human, environmental and economic health, resiliency, sustainability and prosperity across the Ag-Food-Health value chain. The IHA aims to be a model nationally for positioning agriculture as the solution to problems in human and environmental health and economic prosperity. The IHA is a statewide program of The Texas A&M University Systems and is headquartered at Bryan-College Station. Learn more about the IHA at iha.tamu.edu.

Encouraging physical activity to upgrade quality of life

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Texas A&M study finds intervention program increases exercise and health outcomes in older adults

As we age, strength training and aerobic exercise become increasingly important. Studies have shown strength training may enhance quality of life and improve our ability to do everyday activities, while physical inactivity—also known as sedentary behavior—can lead to numerous adverse health conditions and outcomes, including premature death.

Aging rural women are at particular risk for physical inactivity due in part to environmental, sociocultural and psychosocial factors. One way to counter this is through intervention programs that encourage and make it easy for people to be physically active.

Older people doing yoga
Older people doing yoga. (Adobe Stock Image)

Findings recently published by researchers with the Texas A&M University School of Public Health, the Texas A&M AgriLife Institute for Advancing Health Through Agriculture, IHA, and other colleagues looked at changes in physical activity and associated factors from a multicomponent community-engaged intervention trial and found that participants in the intervention group reported more physical activity than those in the control group.

Jay Maddock, Ph.D. Fellow of American Academy of Health Behavior and professor in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health at the School of Public Health and director of the Center for Health and Nature served as first author on the study. Rebecca Seguin-Fowler, Ph.D., registered dietitian and associate director for Healthy Living at the IHA, was the principal investigator of the National Institute of Health-funded study and corresponding author.

The results of the study were recently published in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity.

The intervention program, named Strong Hearts, Healthy Communities 2.0, SHHC-2.0, was built on the results of a previous study, SHHC-1.0, conducted by the researchers.

“In the first trial, we observed significant improvements in outcomes and behaviors, but through process evaluation we knew adaptations to the program were needed to maximize effectiveness and feasibility,” Seguin-Fowler said. “This resulted in the SHHC-2.0 trial to rigorously evaluate the impact of those adaptations.”

SHHC-2.0 was a 24-week program that consisted of twice-per-week, 60-minute experiential group physical activity and nutrition education classes with sessions on social and environmental change.

Classes led by health educators were held at various community locations such as libraries, town halls and churches. Participants were provided with exercise equipment, aerobic exercise videos, participant guides and health journals.

The classes included progressive strength training and aerobic exercise, which included walking and aerobic dance and progressed from low intensity to moderate intensity. Participants were also encouraged to engage in physical activity outside of the classes, and they were provided with strategies and recommendations for exercising in bad weather.

Participants were asked to wear an accelerometer and complete an online survey that included questions related to sociodemographic factors, physical activity behaviors, psychosocial measures and other relevant topics. The surveys were completed prior to the start of intervention, midway through or at 12 weeks, and immediately following the conclusion of the 24-week program.

In total, 316 individuals were screened, and 182 women were enrolled in the trial. Of those women, 70 were age 60 or older.

The research team found that the participants in the intervention group had significantly higher levels of objectively measured and self-reported physical activity at 12 weeks and 24 weeks than the control group. Additionally, the findings were consistent among the 70 participants who were age 60 and older.

“Being physically active throughout the lifespan is essential for good health,” Maddock said. “These results are promising for the effectiveness of the Strong Hearts, Healthy Communities program to help people get and remain active.”

From their findings, the research team concluded that the intervention program successfully increased physical activity among previously sedentary, at-risk older rural women at both 12 weeks and 24 weeks.

“Given the positive, significant impacts across numerous clinical outcomes and health behaviors due to the SHHC 2.0 program overall, and in comparison to SHHC 1.0, we are eager to move the program to national dissemination research studies,” Seguin-Fowler said.

In the future, the team will focus these efforts on implementation and testing in more diverse populations across the U.S.

Additional authors include Texas A&M AgriLife Research’s Margaret Demment, lead data analyst; Meredith Graham, program evaluation and data systems manager; and Galen Eldridge, research specialist, all at the Texas A&M AgriLife Research and Extension Center in Dallas; Sara Folta from the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University; David Strogatz from the Bassett Healthcare Network; Miriam Nelson of Newman’s Own Foundation; and Seong-Yeon Ha at the Texas A&M University Department of Statistics.

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Story by Tim Schnettler first appeared on the Texas A&M Health Vital Record website.

Media contact: Dee Dee Grays, grays@tamu.edu, 979-436-0611