OPHA 80th Annual Conference 2024#

Note

This page is a work in progress. Please check back for updates (Last update: Oct 8, 2024):
  • Video presentation

  • Links to additional resources

  • Expanded vigniettes beyond food and nutrition

Poster#

OPHA 80th Annual Conference 2024 Poster

Click on poster to enlarge.

Audio/video#

If you’d like to listen to me walk through the presentation, please click the link here (coming soon) to listen/view on YouTube.

A Gut Microbiome-Centered Framework#

The gut microbiome is the community of microorganisms associated with a host (human, animal, plant) or environment (marine, soil) and its products (metabolites) or services (functions). The human gut microbiome comprises the microorganisms that live along our gastro-intestinal tract from our mouth to our colons. These microorganisms play a critical role supporting human health through a variety of ways, but principally modulating the immune system, digesting nutrients, and communicating with various body systems.

The gut microbiome mediates a variety of factors across multiple scales, from the individual, environmental to systemic levels. These factors impact human health, and can also impact the gut microbiome composition. The gut microbiome’s composition and its functional capacity (what jobs it’s capable of performing) impacts its ability to support human health. Therefore, it’s critical to understand the variety of factors and their interactions that can impact the gut microbiome to influence human health.

However, these factors do not equitably impact humans and vary across socio-environmental conditions. Therefore, an individual’s ability to maintain a healthy gut microbiome depends on not just their individual lifestyle choices, but their environmental factors. These environmental conditions can be exacerbated or mitigated by systemic-level interventions, such as governmental public health initiatives and policies. (Interconnectedness overlooked). To address this gap, I propose a gut microbiome-centered framework that integrates public health and social equity issues across a multitude of scales to provide a holistic, ecological perspective of human and community health. This gut microbiome-centered framework can strengthen our collective efforts to address and resolve public health and social equity issues by providing a more comprehensive understanding of the factors that impact human health and the gut microbiome.

Factors that Impact the Gut Microbiome#

Microbiome-level factors:

  • Modulates immune system

  • Digests nutrients

  • Communicates with body systems

Acknowledgements#

Many thanks goes to everyone who provided feedback and encouraged me to make this poster. A lot of my initial thoughts came from Microbes and Social Equity working group seminars, and discussions with MSE group members (Dr. Sue Ishaq, Dr. Emily Wissel). I’d also like to thank the members of the Oregon Public Health Association Food and Nutrition section for their encouragement and support (special thanks to group section chair, Tom Sincic).


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