Projects
We collaborate with partners to promote a healthy community by bringing awareness of available programs that promote well-being.
Our lab works broadly across a variety of projects with the overarching goal of eliminating disparities and improving health outcomes with programs that help people increase physical activity, eat healthier, and manage weight. A snapshot of these projects is below.
Building Healthy Families
Building Healthy Families is an evidence-based intervention for obesity treatment and prevention, specifically tailored to kids and families living in rural areas. We have multiple projects underway and beginning soon that will focus on implementing this program throughout the Mountain West Region.
Driving Out Diabetes Initiative
The Driving out Diabetes Initiative (DODI), funded by the Larry H. Miller Family, empowers individuals and families to access optimal wellness – actively preventing and reducing the effects of diabetes in the state of Utah. It is uniquely organized as a combination of community, clinical, and research endeavors charged with increasing healthcare access, engaging community partners, and innovating across University of Utah Health. Our lab manages the evaluation of the DODI programs.
Under this umbrella are programs like Crush Diabetes, Team Thrive, Family Food Matters, the Wellness Bus and others, with the similar goal of helping people improve their health and quality of life.
Paso a Paso
Paso a Paso is a 1U4U funded project to culturally tailor the national diabetes prevention program for the Hispanic community in Salt Lake County. Our group collaborates with University Neighborhood Partners and the Division of Internal Medicine to co-create Paso a Paso with the community, in Spanish, to be more effective and meaningful to the participants.
We are partnered with the University of Utah OSHER center on a project to
- Identify evidence based strategies to recruit patients into programs through a scoping review
- Understand how best to increase the accessibility and utilization of existing clinical programs focused on lifestyle behavior change.
We used a collaborative process with patients and providers to explore barriers to referral/participation and then created a toolkit that would address those barriers.