SFU professor compares South Asian population to non-South Asian population
By Graham Cook
Scott Lear, an SFU professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences, is planning a new study to better understand the heart health of children. It will compare the South Asian population to the non-South Asian population with respect to measures of body fat, body size, strength, and blood pressure.
Lear spoke to The Peak describing his upcoming work as, “a heart health study that’s looking at children in grades two and three, and nine and ten . . . to identify the heart health prevalence of these age groups with a focus on comparisons between the South Asian population in the Vancouver area to the non-South Asian population.” He said that the reasoning behind this is that they “know South Asian adults are at a higher risk for things like diabetes and heart disease, and they also tend to . . . have excess body fat . . . around their waist, which is more problematic than elsewhere.”
What the researchers do not know, however, is whether the same trend is apparent in South Asian children. Of this unknown, Lear said, “That’s one of the goals of looking at the different ethnic groups . . . and the cultural environments may lead to different facilitators and barriers around heart health, whether it’s physical activity . . . or certain types of foods.”
The team will look at the family life as well as the school and surrounding community of the subjects. Lear explained that they have a number of questionnaires for the parents and the children to examine things like how much physical activity they participate in, what their diet is like, how much time they spend in front of screens, and how they get to school. They will record the kinds of programs or policies the school has that may be related to heart health, their facilities, and the extracurricular activities offered. In the surrounding community, they will look at things like park space, access to food, and the number of fast food restaurants near the school.
They will also perform some physical measurements such as height, weight, blood pressure, grip strength, and waist circumference. Additionally, they will request blood samples from about one fifth of the children in order to conduct further tests.
As far as the effects this study will have, Lear stated, “Once we get the results, what we’re going to do is go back to the participants and parents, and ask some of them to participate in focus groups, and say ‘these are some of the things that we found in your community, these are things that are working well, these are things that we’re concerned about,’ and try to work with the community to develop solutions.”
The work on this study began earlier this year and is being done in conjunction with McMaster University in Ontario and collaborators
