Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Fetal Origins Hypothesis, Modernization, and the Hmong Diaspora

Suny At Binghamton, Binghamton NY

Investigators

Abstract

There is good evidence that poor nutrition in the earliest stages of life (including the fetal stage) can affect health profoundly in individuals at much later ages. This is known as the "Fetal Origins Hypothesis." Another major factor affecting peoples' lives and their health is the process of "modernization," or the cultural transition that people undergo during the process of being incorporated into a Western style of life. These two processes (poor early nutrition and modernization) will be studied in Hmong refugees who left Laos during the "Secret War" (1961-1980) and who are between the ages of 19 and 40 years. Two populations will be studied: Hmong who have resettled in rural, isolated farming villages in French Guiana, and Hmong living in the urban setting of Providence, Rhode Island. Information gathered will include life histories by questionnaire and interview and demographic data related to early environment, and anthropometric, body composition, and physiological measures for estimating outcome. Sorting out the effects of early environment and later modernization will be possible by statistical comparisons of the Hmong of French Guiana and of Providence. This study will contribute to our knowledge of: (1) the influence of poor early nutrition on chronic diseases in adulthood, (2) environmental effects on body fat distribution, (3) Hmong ethnography during the war in Southeast Asia, and (4) the health effects of modernization on the resettled Hmong people.