Karen Del Rio Guzman - Rising Research Star

Karen Del Rio, an undergraduate student in the Health Promotion program and research assistant in the Department of Public Health Sciences, presented at two major health research conferences, including Obesity Week 2017 held in Washington, DC on October 29 – November 2, 2017. Obesity Week is the largest obesity-focused conference in the world. The title of her abstract was “Prevalence of Obesity and Risk Factors for Metabolic Syndrome among Uninsured College Hispanic Students in El Paso, Texas.” She also conducted an oral presentation entitled “Evidence Based Screening for Cardiovascular Diseases in Low-Income El Paso Households” at the Healthier Texas Summit held in Austin, TX on November 6 – 7, 2017.

The study presented is a collaboration with Juan Aguilera, Ph.D. student in the Interdisciplinary Health Sciences Ph.D. Program, and Joao Ferreira-Pinto, Ph.D., director for research and special projects at the College of Health Sciences. The study looks at risk factors for metabolic syndrome in uninsured college students at UTEP and found that while there was a low prevalence of metabolic syndrome (10 percent), 60 percent of students had at least one metabolic abnormality and 23 percent had two or more. The study concludes that early detection of metabolic risk factors is crucial for disease prevention, and college campuses provide a distinctive setting for targeted program development and risk factor detection.