Nutrition — what we eat and the processes that bring it to us — influences child health and development, the progression of disease, the environment itself and much more. The 13th Annual Global Health Day Symposium: Nutrition and Global Health Impacts, produced by UB’s Office of Global Health Initiatives (OGHI), will offer a range of topics underscoring the importance of nutrition in the state of global health. The event is co-sponsored by UB’s Community for Global Health Equity.

The symposium takes place from 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. April 19 in G26 Farber Hall, South Campus. Registration is required by April 18.

Lina Mu, OGHI director and associate professor of epidemiology and environmental health, says the symposium “aims to address the global nutrition issues among various populations, from understanding the mechanisms from the molecular level to intervention approaches in the community level.”

Keynoter Marian L Neuhouser is a professor and program head in the Cancer Prevention Program, Division of Public Health Sciences, at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, where she has spent the past 28 years engaged in cancer-related nutrition research.

Neuhouser’s keynote topic, “Advancing human health through nutrition: a core foundation for health promotion and disease prevention,” connects directly to her research. She has been principal or co-investigator on numerous NIH and USDA-funded grants focused on dietary modification interventions for reduction of risk of cancer or progression of existing disease; short term intervention trials to delineate the role of foods, food components and dietary patterns on human metabolism and physiology, and for dietary biomarker discovery; and methodologic research to improve dietary assessment used in cancer-prevention research.

The list of presenters for sessions following the keynote highlights the range of multidisciplinary nutrition research taking place at UB.

From the School of Public Health and Health Professions:

• Eating behavior in children and adolescents: Katherine Balantekin, assistant professor, Department of Exercise and Nutrition Science
• (A)lfajor to (Z)apallo – developing a food contaminants database to support children’s health in Uruguay: Kasia Kordas, associate professor, Department of Epidemiology and Environmental Health.
• Looking back and seeing forward – the role of nutrition in vision as we age: Amy E. Millen, associate professor, Department of Epidemiology and Environmental Health.
• Mobile Produce Market Address Nutrition Insecurity in Underserved Communities across the U.S.: Lucia Leone, associate professor, Department of Community Health and Health Behavior.
• Exploring Smoking Cessation Outreach at the Seneca Babcock Community Association Food Pantry: Toni Naccarella, MPH student in health services administration, Department of Epidemiology and Environmental Health.
• Using dietary patterns to understand mechanisms through which nutrition may influence chronic disease: Kaelyn Burns, PhD candidate, Department of Epidemiology and Environmental Health.

From the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences:

• Dietary factors, smoking cessation and lung cancer: Investigations in Chinese and US populations: Ajay Anand Myneni, research scientist, Department of Surgery.
• Manipulating tumor energetics with dietary restrictions for better cancer care: Sabrina Orsi, PhD candidate, Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology.