• Transitions seeks to determine the physiological and psychological determinants of the decline in physical activity in Latina and African American girls during puberty. The pubertal transition in Latina and African American girls may explain, in part, their increased risk for obesity and may be linked to future risk of breast, endometrial, colon and other cancers.
  
  
• It is a four year longitudinal study (50 African-Americans vs 50 Hispanics, girls) that will be used to understand the longitudinal impact of pubertal insulin resistance on mood, motivation and physical activity levels in Latina and African American girls as they mature.
  
  
• Transitions will shed new light on differences in metabolic and psychosocial risk factors for the decline in physical activity between African Americans and Hispanics.

MINORITY SUPPLEMENT

• Arianna McClain is a fifth-year PhD student in Health Behavior Research.  In the fall of 2007 Arianna was awarded the very prestigious National Institute of Health/National Cancer Institute doctoral research assistant minority supplement, which provides Arianna the proper training to develop into an independent researcher. 
  
  
• Arianna has assisted in the development of culturally appropriate and ethically sound recruitment and retention strategies for longitudinal and intervention research in African American and Latino populations. She also had the opportunity to develop and validate her own culturally appropriate measure of meanings of food for both African American and Latino youth as part of the USC C-TREC research. Arianna also helped to develop and direct the mentoring program that is an important component of Project 2 and is designed to empower the young minority girls who participate in the program to succeed in school.  
  
  
• Her main area of research centers around diet and food intake, with an emphasis on psychosocial and cultural factors that determine dietary intake in minority youth. To accomplish this, she continues to study important elements of nutrition, diet and dietary data development as well as social, socio-economic, environmental and biological factors that influence dietary intake.
  
  
• Arianna’s main career objective is to make a significant contribution to public health knowledge, and to contribute to bridging the gap in minority health through innovative and transdisciplinary research.