My project is
investigating the effects that childhood obesity has on bone mineralization. I
did not come into research with a project in mind, I just knew that after my
stepfather passed away of colorectal cancer my freshman year of college, that I
wanted to know if I was interested enough in research to want to pursue finding
ways to preventing colorectal cancer medically. It was after talking to my
introduction to nutrition professor, Dr. Sina Gallo, about potential research
opportunities that she informed me of this project where I could analyze data
from her larger project to find out if childhood obesity has an effect on bone mineralization.
This project was
instantly interesting to me as I am pursuing a career in medicine, in hopes of
becoming a Pediatrician. Knowing that this project would allow me to
exclusively evaluate data for children I knew that the results from this
research could be beneficial for me when entering the medical field. In
addition, being able to work on this project and carrying out the research
process will allow me to evaluate how much interest I have in research and
whether I can do clinical research on colorectal cancer and ways to prevent it
in the future.
Throughout the
semester, what I do on a weekly basis changes. At the beginning of my project,
most of what I did involved preparing for data collection and collecting data.
I would attain codes from a data source called the National Health and
Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), and from there use those codes, along
with one of my mentors, to collect the data labeled under those codes.
Currently, I am analyzing that data by categorizing the data in tables and
running the appropriate statistical tests to obtain results. I mainly run the
statistical tests when I meet with my mentors every couple of weeks, as they
have the necessary program for the tests. During the time that I am not meeting
with my mentors, I am analyzing the statistical results and writing up the
results found. I also have begun writing my abstract and introduction, and I
work on these aspects of my project weekly.
One thing that I
discovered this week is that, based on the data collected from NHANES, that
many children consume enough calcium but are not getting enough vitamin D. This
is interesting as vitamin D is the necessary vitamin that allows absorption of
the calcium, and other minerals, into the body.
