Research
Prevention of Diabetes and Obesity – Simon Griffin
Already a quarter of the adult population in England and almost a fifth of all children under the age of 16 are classified as obese. It has been estimated that the cost of obesity to the NHS is approximately £4.2 billion and this is expected to more than double by 2050. Diabetes is also becoming increasingly common and currently consumes approximately 10% of NHS resources. As a consequence tackling diabetes, obesity and related metabolic disorders is one of the critical public health challenges of the 21st century, and our group aims to play an important role in meeting this challenge.
The overall goal of our research is to contribute to prevention of the growing burden of obesity, type 2 diabetes and related metabolic disorders. We translate epidemiological knowledge into action and assess the effectiveness and impacts of different individual and population level approaches to behaviour change and disease prevention.
Our research includes a range of projects that focus on primary and secondary prevention:
- primary prevention: preventing the development of the disease before it starts.
- secondary prevention: identifying those people that have the disease whether they are showing symptoms of the disease or not.
These projects involve development of new studies as well as innovative use of data from populations already participating in studies.
To translate knowledge from epidemiological studies into preventive action our work involves a number of keys steps:
- identification of individuals or groups who are at increased risk
- description of the important risk factors that can be altered
- identification of the key influences on each risk factor, e.g. attitudes or aspects of the environment
- development of interventions to target one or more of these factors, e.g. promoting walking
- development of methods to identify people likely to benefit from an intervention
- evaluation of the success of an intervention
- estimation of its potential impact on public health.
Although these projects overlap with other programmes in the MRC Epidemiology Unit, they take a complementary approach and make efficient use of common study resources. Our work also has wider relevance to a range of health behaviours and other chronic conditions.
For further information on the research of the Prevention Group click here.
For a full list of studies that the Prevention Group is involved in click here.
