Nellie Triedman, US Student 2017 from Weslayen University, Boston, is investigating obesity and mental health in adolescents in Chile, a mayor public health situation in our country and the continent. She will look into the mayor psychological problems associated, in collaboration with the Instituto de Nutrición y Tecnología de los Alimentos de la Universidad de Chile, INTA and Universidad Católica.

March was a busy month for me. After the Fulbright orientation, I finally established with my advisor which survey tool I would be using for my project, and went to work on writing and submitting my project protocol, consent forms, surveys, and letter for the amendment to INTA’s IRB. This step involved collaborating with Camila Corvalán (my Fulbright advisor), Nancy (research assistant), an Anita (who is the head of the IRB at INTA. I reached out to the KINDL research group, located in Hamberg Germany to ask them about the process for developing a validated versions of the KIDNL surveys in Chilean Spanish. They were really helpful, and sent me a table with the versions of the all KINDL surveys in German, English and Spanish (from Spain). I used these different language versions to propose changes so that the surveys could easily be understood by Chilean adolescents. Once the KINDL research group approved this initial version,

I started pretesting, and in total interviewed 7 adolescents on their comprehension of the survey items. Each semi-structured interview took about 15-25 minutes, in which I asked adolescents to answer the questions, rephrase certain words or questions into their own words, and also asked if it was easy or hard for them to understand the question. All of my notes were documented in the table the German group sent me  and I worked closely with the nutritionists at INTA to make sure that the interviews did not disrupt the flow of the usual study visits. information that was sent to the German group was just the different versions surveys themselves and general remarks to justify changes.     Finish making preparations for the pilot study, and then actually conduct the pilot study. ..Once the pilot is complete (10-20 adolescents), I will conduct statistical analysis on test-retest reliability and chronbach’s alpha to further ensure that this a valid measure of QOL for our sample .

Now that the study itself is moving along, I’ve come to realize that I need to enhance the civic engagement part of my project proposal. I’ve joined a running club, and am helping out with some additional studies at INTA, but within the next week I also want to start looking into different volunteer opportunities in and around Santiago.  This photo was taken in Fantasilandia ( an amusement park in the center of Santiago). The people in the pgoyo with me are nutritionists who work in the clinic at INTA. It was a really fun day and I think everyone had a great time¡¡