View Larger Image
Bernard Muriithi, Ph.D.
Muriithi Receives Grant to Test Diabetes Intervention
| Bernard Muriithi, Ph.D., OTR/L, an assistant professor in the Occupational Therapy Doctoral (OTD) program, has been selected for the K12 Mentored Research Career Development Scholar Awards Program as the principal investigator on a study to develop and test an occupational therapy intervention for Type 2 diabetes in the Marshallese people of Northwest Arkansas.
The Translational Research Institute at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) administers the K12 Scholars Program, which provides promising early career faculty the research training, mentoring, seed funding and protected time to develop a research project and help them become independently funded investigators.
Type 2 diabetes is the eighth leading cause of death in the United States. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), it affected 11.6% of the population of the United States and costs more than $400 billion in direct costs in 2021. The Marshallese have the highest prevalence of diabetes of any population in the world, with documented prevalence ranging from 25% to 50% for Marshallese adults.
Addressing Type 2 diabetes in this population has long been a goal of health care clinicians and researchers in Northwest Arkansas, as this community is disproportionately affected by the disease and a large number of Marshallese (currently about 15,000) have resided in the region since the 1980s (the largest population of Marshallese outside of the Marshallese Islands).
“One big challenge,” Muriithi said, “is that the Marshallese in the U.S. are less likely to seek health care due to lower trust in the health care system, limited access to care, difficulty navigating the health care system, language barriers and transportation challenges.”
The study, “Adapting Lifestyle Redesign for Diabetes Management among the Marshallese in Northwest Arkansas,” hopes to bridge an important knowledge gap by developing a culturally appropriate, acceptable and effective solution to Type 2 diabetes. The study aims to fill this gap by adapting an evidence-based intervention called Lifestyle Redesign to make it consistent with Marshallese values, culture and language.
A positive outcome in the proposed study would increase support for an activity- and lifestyle-based intervention that has been successful in treating a variety of medical conditions but has never been tested with the Marshallese.
Phase one of the study will involve developing the adapted Lifestyle Redesign program. Muriithi plans to use a community-based participatory research (CBPR) approach, which helps investigators overcome community distrust, allows participants to bring their expertise, enhances the relevance and application of the findings, and improves community health.
As an approach rather than a method, CBPR utilizes a variety of data collection and analysis methods that are agreed upon jointly by a researcher and community partners. Marshallese community health workers from the UAMS Institute for Community Health Innovation, who have supported research using similar community-based procedures, will be recruited to support this program. Ongoing collaborative research at the institute has developed a network of Marshallese community members, community health workers, providers, churches and other local institutions that serve the Marshallese and support research.
As data is collected and analyzed, concurrent adaptation of the Lifestyle Redesign program will be made and taken back to the community for comments, suggestions and revisions.
“We expect that multiple versions of the adapted Lifestyle Redesign program will need to be taken back to community members for critique, suggestions or change before an acceptable version that satisfies community members is developed,” Muriithi said.
TRI and its K12 program are supported by the National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, with Clinical and Translational Science Awards, UM1 TR004909 and K12 TR004924.