NutrEx
JULY 2024 NEWSLETTER
NEP Students Aim to Shape Cardiovascular Health Interventions through Fellowship-Funded Research
Cardiovascular disease is the number one killer of Americans, and physical inactivity significantly increases this risk. Two undergraduate Nutrition and Exercise Physiology students hope to be part of changing that.
Macauley Devin and Liam Quinn are among 40 undergraduate students at Washington State University to receive fellowships to support their research, scholarship, and creative activity for the coming academic year.
System-wide, the fellowships total $61,000 and are associated with many awards granted to undergraduates engaged in mentored research.
Both Devin and Quinn received the Auvil Scholars Fellowship for their work at the WSU College of Medicine’s Nutrition and Exercise Physiology Health and Fitness Clinic with assistant professor and faculty mentor Catherine Jarrett, PhD, RDN.
Together, they aim to assess clinic participants’ vascular health and the efficacy of their nutrition and exercise interventions.
“This fellowship and the following conference are important opportunities to showcase what we’re doing here with practical, community-based interventions,”
Liam Quinn, NEP Undergraduate Student
Though Nutrition and Exercise students traditionally perform pre- and post-clinic evaluations with clients in which they assess fitness, balance, strength, and other things the volunteers are interested in, they have not looked at vascular health before, explained Jarrett.
Working with a small sample of community clinic participants throughout the fall 2024 semester, the research team will glean advanced insights into an important health factor.
“We have two novel mechanisms to look at,” said Jarrett. “Vascular function and vascular stiffness. By looking at these, we can get a baseline of how healthy your blood vessels are.”
The first tool to assess vascular function is an ultrasound tool used to measure the blood flow of the femoral artery in the leg, which can assess microvasculature function in the leg when passively moved. The other is used to track vascular stiffness by measuring how fast a pulse can move from the carotid to the femoral artery.
Both mechanisms help clinicians look at arterial health and pulsatility, which play a significant role in the energy demands a body can place on the heart.
“It will give us a real-world look at changes in health following prescribed exercise-based training and nutrition counseling,” said Quinn.
The research team hopes that the results can pave the way for making a case to integrate these non-invasive assessments into standard check-ups. If a clinician begins to see worrying health trends, they could prescribe preventative measures.
For Devin, the results could also leave an important legacy within the department, emphasizing the practical, community health outcomes students can make when it is their turn to work with clients at the clinic.
“This information could help inform the prescriptions they give to clients,” said Devin. “It will go a long way to showing the effectiveness of our clinic, what we’re excelling at, and how we can make a difference.”
Devin and Quinn will go on to present their findings in Pullman at the annual Showcase for Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities in spring 2025.
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