Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Beyond The Bmi: Expanding Quantitative Methods To Study Health For All Bodies, Kieran Chase, Daniel Oron

OHSU-PSU School of Public Health Annual Conference

The public health field is beginning to reckon with its role in perpetuating and reinforcing systemic anti-fatness. Emerging evidence for the devastating health impacts of stigma call into question decades of research and policy that labels the size of people’s bodies as diseased. However, even as we acknowledge the harmful effects of stigma, the field is materially and institutionally invested in a health paradigm that centers weight loss and size-related proxies for health, such as the BMI. Public health scholars interested in questions related to nutrition, chronic disease, and exercise must begin to expand their research focus to imagine non-stigmatizing …

Serotonin And Migraine, Sophia A. Kogan

OHSU-PSU School of Public Health Annual Conference

Migraine, experienced by more than 1 billion people, is the second leading cause of disability worldwide. It is a physiologically complex disorder with nervous, vascular, and inflammatory components, and is associated with genetic factors and environmental influences. Migraine triggers are poorly understood, and sufferers have little control in preventing migraines from occurring. The aim of this review is to bridge the physiological migraine processes with lifestyle behaviors that can be modified by individuals, focusing on serotonin.

Migraines can be initiated when an external event triggers the release of vasodilators such as calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP), leading to cranial vasodilation, headache, …

(Un)Weighted Assumptions: Anti-Fatness & Health, Kieran Chase, Nell Carpenter, Madysen Schreiber

OHSU-PSU School of Public Health Annual Conference

This lecture/discussion session aims to expand and add nuance to public health students’, professors’, and practitioners’ understanding of the interplay between body size and health. We will begin by naming and challenging common assumptions about the relationship between bodyweight and health outcomes. We will then argue for the consideration of weight-related stigma as a Fundamental Cause of Disease as defined by Phelan and Link, and for institutionally embedded anti-fat bias at the policy level (e.g., insurance policy, medical equipment) as a cause of population health inequity as defined in Whitehead’s Health Equity Framework. We offer these frameworks in contrast to, …

Does Sph Curricula Promote ‘Health Equity’, Reproduce Injustice, Or Both?, Jesse Yarnold

OHSU-PSU School of Public Health Annual Conference

Does SPH Curricula Promote ‘Health Equity’, Reproduce Injustice, or both?

The social justice movements of recent years (preceded by [generations of] insurmountable suffering) have facilitated a collective recognition of the systemic effects of racism and epistemic violence. Despite the ambitious and well-intentioned vision of “health equity” as defined by epidemiologic scholarship - progress is slow and injustices prevail.

Students, scholars, and researchers of ‘Public Health’ are uniquely positioned to imagine and create innovative ways of understanding and addressing the harmful inequities and injustices perpetuated by white settler colonialism. I argue that Academic institutions delivering Public Health education are uniquely positioned …

The Prevalence Of Osteoporosis And Low Femoral Neck Bone Density Among Never-Smoking U.S. Adults With Exposure To Secondhand Smoke: A Cross-Sectional Study Using The National Health And Nutrition Examination Survey (Nhanes), Felicia Zhou, Mikaela Haglund

OHSU-PSU School of Public Health Annual Conference

Objective

Epidemiologic studies have observed an association between exposure to secondhand smoke (SHS) and low bone mineral density (BMD) among current and past smokers. However, there is a knowledge gap in elucidating this association among never-smoking adults. The objective of this study is to examine the association between SHS exposure, measured by serum cotinine levels, and BMD for never-smoking U.S. adults.

Methods

This cross-sectional analysis included 3,224 never-smoking U.S. adults aged 50 years and older from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey cycles 2007-2008, 2009-2010, and 2013-2014. Serum cotinine, a biomarker for tobacco exposure, was the exposure variable while …

History Of Hypertension And Urinary Incontinence Among Adults Aged 40 And Older: A Cross-Sectional Study From The National Health And Nutrition Examination Survey, Puthyda Keath, Karla Cordova Nicolas

OHSU-PSU School of Public Health Annual Conference

Introduction: Urinary incontinence (UI) impacts over 200 million individuals world-wide, though little is known about the causes of this condition. The aim of this cross-sectional study was to examine prevalence of UI and the association between a history of hypertension and UI in older adults. A secondary aim was to determine if sex modified the association between history of hypertension and UI.

Methods: This study utilized data from the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2011-2016 cycles. We included 9,717 U.S adults (≥40 years) with complete information on history of hypertension, UI and other independent variables. Participants with …