Camille Worthington, PhD, RDN, LDN has been selected as this year’s Named New Investigator for the UAB Nutrition Obesity Research Center (NORC). The center leadership selects from among funded pilot/feasibility recipients and then receives approval from the UAB NORC External Advisory Committee prior to formally making the appointment.

Dr. Worthington is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Nutrition Sciences. In 2012, Dr. Worthington came to UAB to complete her Dietetic Internship and PhD in the Department of Nutrition Sciences. As a graduate student, she was supported by a NORC pre-doctoral fellowship funded through the NIH T32 grant (T32HL105349) awarded by the Heart, Lung and Blood Disease Institute (NHLBI). Upon completing her PhD in 2019, she transitioned to a postdoctoral training position in the UAB Division of Preventive Medicine which she completed in 2022.

The pilot project Dr. Worthington will work on in the next year is titled “Timing of Energy Intake and Associations with Adiposity among Postpartum Women: A Pilot Study.” The proposed research is to collect necessary preliminary data to assess the applicability of various circadian meal timing-based approaches (e.g., chrononutrition) for managing cardiometabolic health postpartum and to inform the development of a chrononutrition intervention adapted for postpartum women to be tested as part of a subsequent grant application. The pilot project will be the first study in postpartum women to 1) characterize patterns of meal timing postpartum, 2) assess associations between misaligned eating patterns (e.g., late-night intake) and postpartum adiposity, and 3) explore factors associated with meal timing via qualitative interviews, which will be used to identify relevant targets for adapting existing chrononutrition interventions for the target population. As such, the preliminary data obtained from this grant would support various future external grant proposals to advance several areas of investigation.

The Named New Investigator is an honor created when UAB NORC received its designation as an NIDDK Center in 2001. The award is especially important for an early career scientist, providing $45,000 toward salary and protecting effort dedicated toward their pilot project.