NIH New Initiative to Study Obesity/New Paradigm

• Obesity
• Research

Yesterday and today, three UCSF colleagues and I have been participating in a meeting for the seven teams that have been funded by NIH to translate basic behavioral and social science discoveries into interventions to reduce obesity. EBT is the intervention of one of them. This work is in response to a U-01 which is a kind of award that is based on collaboration, allowing more creativity and five years of bringing together researchers with different projects to respond to a particularly challenging problem. The program director is Susan Czajkowski,Ph.D., Clinical Applications and Prevention Branch, Division of Cardiovascular Sciences. It took her 2.5 years of hard work to bring this project together, and she is so enthusiastic and there is hope for a new paradigm in obesity treatment. I have been really struck by the concentration of expertise in one room -- about 40 people are participating -- and a tremendous enthusiasm. People are curious, focused, creative, responsive, and . . . cooperative. I'm very grateful to Elissa Epel. Barbara Lariara and Nancy Adler for taking the initiative and put their efforts behind asking the National Institutes of Health to study EBT. We'll be sharing the updates from all the projects in coming posts!