What Effect Does Pregnancy Have on Fathers?
Professor Todd Hagobian has been awarded a 3.3 million dollar NIH grant to study father’s health during pregnancy. More specifically, Professor Hagobian plans on studying whether mothers who change their eating and exercise routine during pregnancy will influence dads.
In 2011, Professor Suzanne Phelan of the Kinesiology department began a research study on obese moms to help them determine the appropriate amount of weight to gain during pregnancy. Dr. Hagobian plans to study the same population, but his study will focus on the fathers. He hypothesizes that fathers behavior will mimic the mothers, ie, if moms start dieting and losing weight after child birth, so will dads.
This grant will provide undergraduates with the opportunity to perform real world research, and be involved with all aspects of data collection. Professor Hagobian plans on working with students to gain experience in high quality research that's comparable with research done at R1 institutions like Harvard and Stanford.
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