Inês is leaving to Mexico on Saturday very early in the morning to attend the celebrations of the 50th Anniversary of CINVESTAV. She will be a guest speaker there. The summary of her talk is here:
Title: The health status of the Maya: Summary of our research with CINVESTAV
Author: Dr Maria Ines Varela Silva, Lecturer in Human Biology at the Centre for Global Health and Human Development, Loughborough University, UK
Dr Varela-Silva's group has been conducting research with the Maya since 1992. The aims of this research are:
1. to understand the factors that shape health outcomes among Maya children and their families
2. to compare the health status of the Maya in Mexico and Guatemala with Maya migrants in the USA
3. to train new generations of researchers in their own countries so that this type of research can continuously be improved
4. to plan and implement meaningful interventions that will help improve the life and health status of the Maya families
During her talk Dr Varela-Silva will present data regarding health, nutritional status and growth outcomes of Maya groups. Overall, the Maya are very short and present a very high prevalence of chronic undernutrition (stunting). In the last 20 years the Maya are also showing a high prevalence of overweight and obesity. The coexistence of chronic undernutrition with overnutrition is a recent phenomenon designated as "dual burden of malnutrition". The causes of this phenomenon are complex and cover a range of behavioural, environmental, metabolic and intergenerational factors that act synergistically and produce a wide range of negative health outcomes. When the Maya migrate to the Unites States they show a very rapid increase in height, which is a positive indicator, but these migrants also show disproportionate increases in the rates of overweight and obesity that rank above the national references. Changes in nutrition and patterns of regular daily of physical activity explain, in part, this trend towards overweight/obesity but complex metabolic and epigenetic factors also seem to be part of the problem.
Dr Varela-Silva has also been delivering training sessions to researchers at CINVESTAV and other research units around the world. One of the missions of her research group is to further help the development of anthropology and allow researchers in their countries to continue meaningful research projects that have a positive impact on the health and wellbeing of the populations.
Implementing intervention programmes among the Maya families is also a goal that Dr Varela-Silva's team is pursuing. In this talk she will present some ideas on how to increase awareness among the Maya families regarding health-related issues.
Finally, Dr Varela-Silva will highlight the contribution of researchers at CINVESTAV - especially the collaboration with Dr Federico Dickinson.
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