Report of the Design, Implementation and Preliminary Results of a Community Based Project in a Health Disparate Community in Rural New Mexico

Pediatric obesity disproportionally affects communities with high minority populations, and rural communities often lack resources to support healthy lifestyles required to prevent chronic disease risk development in children. This project involves a collaborative partnership between a community hospital, multiple community-based organizations and four academic institutions (Colorado School of Public Health, University of Colorado Denver, University of Northern Colorado and Vanderbilt University) in a predominantly American Indian community in the Southwest, and provided an immersive, community-focused educational experience for undergraduate, masters and doctoral students from each of the academic institutions. This mixed-method project used surveys, focus groups, community mapping, interviews and clinical assessment of cardiovascular and type 2 diabetes risk to examine health disparities, social determinants impacting childhood health outcomes, and potential community-based intervention strategies to combat the long-term health burdens associated with pediatric obesity. A Community Advisory Council serves to provide input into the project, as well as identify next steps in implementing sustainable community-based intervention strategies that will help provide equitable access to healthy lifestyles for the next generation. This presentation focuses on the process involved in the design and implementation of this project. Its uniqueness is in the collaboration between multiple academic and community institutions, and the involvement of multiple student groups. We will also discuss how this project was an opportunity to reinforce, in a field experience, the content that students were presented in their respective classroom experiences, as well as present preliminary results found in both the clinical and environmental assessment portions of the study.