Grant: Environments, Genes and Chronic Disease - LOI

It has long been known that caregiver-infant attachment interactions early in life can have a very important influence on the health of a growing child. Recent evidence suggests that attachment stress can sometimes increase the risk for obesity, although much more work is needed to understand how and why this happens. The current proposal brings together a world-class group of investigators, with a very broad range of expertise, to address this problem head-on. We propose a series of related studies based on three large studies of developing children being followed since birth in Canada, the Netherlands and Singapore. Our goal is to understand how genes can make children more vulnerable to an adverse attachment environment, and how this leads to problem weight gain over time. Several clinicians who work with obese children have expressed a great deal of interest in this study, as it is likely to lead to new preventative interventions that can be implemented at a community level. We have formed several important partnerships to help in this regard, including collaborations with the Canadian Obesity network, Brain to Society Program and the TargetKids program that all play a role in the prevention of chronic disease. In this way, findings from this research are likely to have a major impact on the health of Canadians for decades to come.