Dean Gale Starich heads the College of Health Sciences and the Sidney O. Smith Graduate School, she’ll never stop thinking as an endocrinologist and biochemist.

These days Starich applies her expertise in an interdisciplinary research project at Brenau, which studies childhood health indicators among children in the Real Interactive Summer Experience Program, offered by community partnership in Gainesville, Georgia, to low-income children.

The RISE program, a collaborative effort by Brenau University, the Gainesville Housing Authority, Gainesville City Schools and other community partners, aims to limit learning loss for low-income children through interactive educational experiences during six weeks each summer. Starich works with Sandra Davis, professor of nursing, and Sheral Page, assistant professor of nursing, to evaluate pediatric health indicators through measurements of waist circumference and calculation of the body mass index, or BMI.

BMI calculations make it possible to sort the 107 students who have gone through the summer program into five categories: underweight, normal, overweight, obese, and overweight or obese. According to federal definitions, overweight children fall in the 86th to 95th percentile, and obese children fall above the 95th percentile.

“I am an endocrinologist and biochemist,” Starich says. “That is always running through my brain. So I’ve been working since 1981 on research in primarily type-two diabetes and the associated obesity. When I began my work, there were very few obese children in the United States, and there were vanishingly few children and adolescents who had Type 2 diabetes.”

Nationally, that statistic has changed, however. While it might seem natural to assume that low-income children with less access to food might be underweight, the opposite seems to be true. Starich’s study identifies a growing trend in childhood obesity: low-income children with little access to healthy food choices and a balanced diet tend to be overweight, not under.

Of the 107 local children, an unfortunate and remarkable 61 are “overweight or obese,” making up 57 percent of the surveyed children. Of that number, 39 are obese, and 22 are overweight. A total of 44 children are in the normal weight range for their ages and heights, and only a couple are underweight.

These results are consistent with pediatric data collected in Hall County, Georgia, and public health data reported for the state of Georgia. Starich says it calls for more controlled food intake and exercise monitoring, plus supplemental nutrition education.

This call for action is more than a statement, however, and the research is more than a presentation or piece of paper. Proposed changes in healthy snacks and nutrition education are already slated for the summer 2017 RISE program, meaning more than 100 local children will be impacted by these results.

“This is really an interdisciplinary effort, and it is one we are excited about,” Starich said.

Starich presented these findings at the 2017 Brenau Research Symposium Friday, March 24. This year’s symposium included the highest ever number of faculty research papers in addition to the many student projects. Issues ranging from demographics in the Mediterranean to childhood obesity rates in Gainesville, Georgia, are some of the many topics currently being researched and addressed at Brenau.

“The symposium is a forum for presenting and discussing the wide variety of research being conducted by the students and faculty at Brenau,” says Kelly Peters, dean’s assistant for the College of Health Sciences. “Subjects range from looking at the microcosm of Brenau and Women’s Colleges to environmental issues that impact the entire globe, and a wide range of topics in between.”

Learn more about the RISE Program in “What’s the Big Idea?” from the Fall 2013 issue of Brenau Window.