Andrea Kozak examines how obesity affects health-related quality of life

Assistant Professor Andrea Kozak, of the Department of Psychology, is the lead author on a paper about the Relationship of Body Mass Index in Young Adulthood and Health-Related Quality of Life Two Decades Later: the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults Study (International Journal of Obesity, Volume 35, Pages 134-141, 2011). Kozak and her team examined data from the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) study, a major examination of how heart disease develops that was funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute since 1983. Their goal was to determine if being overweight or obese as young adults led to a poorer health-related quality of life years later. They found that “overweight and obesity in early adulthood are adversely associated with self-reported physical [health-related quality of life], but not mental [health-related quality of life] 20 years later.”