Understanding and preventing obesity is the driving force for University of Queensland researcher Dr Abdullah Mamun.
Dr Mamun has received a 2009 UQ Foundation Research Excellence Award, with the $80,000 to be used to continue his work to find the optimal timing of primary prevention of obesity among people entering the life stages when they are most prone to putting on weight.
He hopes to use this grant to investigate the developmental stages of obesity and identify effective prevention strategies.
The development stages when people are most likely to put on weight are in pregnancy, childhood, and as teenagers.
“Obesity is one of the biggest public health crises. There is lot of interest and a lot of research on going without success, ” Dr Mamun said.
“Most of the interventions do not have long-term positive impact on slowing weight gain or reducing obesity among children and adolescents.
“Before embarking on the expense of intervention studies, high-quality evidence on the optimal timing of primary prevention of obesity needed from observational studies that will define the most appropriate interventions to be assessed is required.
“You need prevention or intervention as early as possible.”
Many people did not think their children were obese, despite signs and symptoms to the contrary, Dr Mamun said.
Others blamed genetics for their children being obese, when environmental factors played a much bigger part, he said.
“Our lifestyle has changed quite a lot, especially with children spending lot of time on screen play and people working at a desk and eating unhealthy food,” he said.
“One factor is people’s perception. They think, ‘my kid is like other kids’. The parents do not classify their children as obese.”
It was important to change this perception because childhood was the time obesity could start and lessons relating to eating habits and exercising were learned, he said.
“Childhood is the time for learning things. They learn food behaviour, sports, TV watching and establish the social context in which behaviours are learned and established. This early life learning will have a reflection on a person’s life course.”
Dr Mamun completed his PhD in Groningen in The Netherlands in 2003, focusing on modeling the life course of cardiovascular disease using 50-years follow-up of the prestigious Framingham Heart Study.
When he started at UQ’s School of Population Health more than five years ago, he became involved with the Mater–University of Queensland Study of Pregnancy (MUSP), an ongoing study of the health of mothers and their children.
The study began when the women were pregnant in the early 1980s and has continued to follow their progress to this day.
“I am interested in doing something for public health. I like research, developing something new and innovative. It is challenging,” he said.
“The important thing (about the research excellence award) is the recognition of the research. The second thing is the money.
“The recognition is for our contribution to science. We are getting new knowledge.”
Dr Mamun’s daughter Mehjabin, 8, and son Mashrafee, 4, are already learning about healthy lifestyle choices from their father.
“They know what I am doing. When I learn something in the research, I share this with my family. They already know about the purpose of healthy lifestyle choices. Their knowledge is gaining. I see it reflected in my kids,” he said.
Media: Dr Abdullah Mamun (07 3346 4689)
