STRIDE Welcomes Professor Sarah Keadle
STRIDE is excited to welcome Sarah Keadle, a new kinesiology faculty member, as an affiliate. Keadle joined Cal Poly in fall 2016, bringing with her extensive experience in analyzing complex activity monitor data and an interest in studying ways to decrease sitting time and increase physical activity. Keadle comes to Cal Poly from the National Cancer Institute. Below Keadle discusses her research and recent publications.
What was your role in research and the position you held before coming to Cal Poly?
I was a cancer prevention fellow at the National Cancer institute. I worked in the metabolic epidemiology branch on large prospective studies to investigate how exercise and sitting time relate to cancer risk and mortality. In a Journal of the American Medical Association article* we found that people who exercise are at lower risk for 13 types of cancer, and another study that I led found that high amounts of television viewing are associated with increased risk of eight of the leading causes of death in the U.S. My role in these studies was to conduct data analysis and write papers on existing large prospective cohorts.
*Note from the editor: This article was in the the top 100 most-discussed journal articles of 2016 according to Altmetric. Read the Altmertric report on this article
What types of research will you be doing now?
As I transition to Cal Poly, I want to develop new studies to look at how we can most effectively decrease sitting and increase exercise in different populations. I also worked previously on new ways to process data from activity monitors, and I plan to continue doing measurement-related research here. To really understand how these behaviors relate to health, we need to have accurate measures of what people are doing throughout the day.
How do you see this research overlapping with STRIDE?
My research interests overlap a lot with the mission and studies taking place in STRIDE. Initially I have become involved with ongoing projects that have collected activity monitor data, and I am looking at new ways to process that data to try to understand how activity is changing in response to behavioral interventions. I am also getting valuable mentorship from STRIDE faculty on how to design and implement behavioral interventions and hope to collaborate on future projects to understand how we can most effectively improve health through diet and exercise.