Enhancing Health Through Research and Community Solutions
The Zuckerman Family Center for Prevention and Health Promotion conducts high-quality research aimed to improve health outcomes and reduce disease risk through diet, physical activity, and community-based strategies.
Our Focus
The Zuckerman Family Center for Prevention and Health Promotion conducts high quality prevention research aimed at improving health outcomes and reducing disease risk. The primary focus of our research efforts is enhancing health through diet/nutrition and physical activity interventions. Additionally, we have a keen interest in implementing and evaluating sustainable and effective community-based strategies for addressing health disparities and priorities in the community.
ZFCPHP investigators bring a broad range of expertise to health promotion research including, but not limited to, diet and physical activity interventions for obesity, cancer prevention and survivorsip, cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Additionally, ZFCPHP engages in health literacy initiatives, community-based interventions, wellness/health registry, behavioral coaching, and program evaluation.
Under the direction of Cyndi Thomson, PhD, Director and Professor, ZFCPHP offers faculty researchers opportunities to collaborate and identify support services.
Collaboratory
The Collaboratory is a unification of relevant research and operational components of the College of Public Health, College of Medicine-Department of Family and Community Medicine, Arizona Cancer Center, the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences-Department of Nutritional Sciences and the College of Nursing. It has over 10,000 square feet of UA-leased floor in the ultramodern Hebert K. Abrams Public Health Center, a Pima County-owned building adjacent to the Banner UA Medical Center-South Campus. Collaboratory faculty offer expertise and services important to patient care, student training, research and evidence-based community programs.
Center-Funded Pilot Studies
Currently, the ZFCPHP is not awarding funds to pilot studies; however, the remarkable pilot projects below from 2011-2015 were previously awarded funding.
This project will challenge current research paradigms for Hispanic males by testing a gender– and culturally–sensitive weight loss intervention and providing highly impactful formative research on recruitment strategies and desire to use novel mHealth self–monitoring technologies to facilitate dietary/physical activity behavior changes.
- Principal Investigator: David O. Garcia, PhD
- PI Contact Email: davidogarcia@arizona.edu
- Year Awarded: 2015
- Amount of Award: $25,000
This collaborative, community-based project will introduce and modify a “Mind-Body Medicine” program to recent graduates of a parent education program, along with testing the acceptability of a program targeting stress and data collection approaches to measuring stress.
- Principal Investigator: Rebecca Drummond
- PI Contact Email: drummond@arizona.edu
- Year Awarded: 2012
- Amount of Award: $25,000
The work is designed to produce preliminary results regarding potential dietary obesogens, develop methods of modeling synergistic and antagonistic effects of dietary toxicants and trace minerals on obesity-related outcomes, and to generate new hypotheses.
- Principal Investigator: Margaret Kurzius-Spencer MS, MPH
- PI Contact Email: mkurzius@arizona.edu
- Year Awarded: 2012
- Amount of Award: $15,003
(Director’s Choice Award) This formative research project will inform the design of a promotora-led intervention with new mothers around monitoring their infant’s healthy growth and development.
- Principal Investigator: Angela Valencia, MPH
- PI Contact Email: avalencia@azcc.arizona.edu
- Year Awarded: 2012
- Amount of Award: $34,000
"Honoring Your Gift" is a pilot collaboration between the University of Arizona Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health, Freedom’s Gate Ministries, and Ministerios Getsemani. The project offers a program of health promotion strategies targeting specific modifiable risk factors for heart disease in multiethnic southwest Tucson.
- Principal Investigator: Sheila Parker, MS, DrPH
- PI Contact Email: parkers@arizona.edu
- Year Awarded: 2011
- Amount of Award: $40,000