Grant: Master's Award: Canada Graduate Scholarships

Obesity has become an increasingly problematic health issue worldwide. Obesity is one of the factors that determines an individuals metabolic health, along with blood pressure, blood sugar, and fat levels in the blood. An individuals metabolic health status directly relates to their risk of developing multiple chronic diseases, including diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, and certain types of cancers.Nurses are critical in caring for and educating overweight and obese patients, however, research to date has suggested that they are highly inactive and overweight or obese themselves. In a high stress occupation, that often involves shiftwork, it is likely that a nurses physical activity, nutrition, stress, and sleep play a role in determining their metabolic health status.Nursing students are a group of interest since they will be working with the increasing number of overweight and obese patients. As they are still actively engaged in education, nursing students are the ideal group to educate about how lifestyle choices can impact their own health and the health of their future patients. Unfortunately, there is little information known about how lifestyle factors, including physical activity, nutrition, stress, and sleep impact nursing students' metabolic health.This study aims to characterize the lifestyle factors that are most strongly associated with poor metabolic health status in nursing students, and aid in developing a lifestyle intervention for nursing students targeting improvement of those factors. Identifying the most prominent factors affecting the metabolic health status of this group is important in optimizing the physical and mental health of nursing students and could influence how they counsel their patients in the future.