Moving Beyond Weight, Length, and Head Circumference: Advances in Infant Nutritional Assessment

Sunday, April 30, 2023

2:00 PM – 3:30 PM ET

Location: Convention Center: 146 A

CE: Live CME: 1.50

Selected By: Neonatal

Chair(s)

MB

Mandy Belfort, MD, MPH (she/her/hers)

Attending Neonatologist and Associate Professor of Pediatrics
Pediatric Newborn Medicine
Brigham and Women's Hospital
Boston, Massachusetts, United States
Sarah Taylor, MD, MSCR (she/her/hers)

Professor
Yale University
MADISON, Connecticut, United States

Disclosure(s):

Mandy Belfort, MD, MPH: I do not have any relevant financial / non-financial relationships with any proprietary interests.

Sarah N. Taylor, MD, MSCR: Astarte Medical: Speaker Honorarium including speakers bureau, symposia, and expert witness (Terminated, January 28, 2021); Ferring Pharmaceuticals: Research Support including clinical trials & the principal or named investigator (Ongoing); Pfizer: Research Support including clinical trials & the principal or named investigator (Terminated, July 27, 2022); Prolacta Bioscience: Research Support including clinical trials & the principal or named investigator (Ongoing)

Session

Description: Preterm infant growth is essential for neurodevelopment yet the interplay of dietary and non-dietary factors in influencing these outcomes remains poorly understood. Accurate, specific, and dynamic assessment of nutritional status is needed to identify the ideal growth pattern and diet to maximize brain maturation during a critical period while minimizing future metabolic health risk. Neonatal nutrition research is now expanding beyond anthropometrics and applying innovative approaches to assess body composition among newly born and growing infants. The concepts and tools from the field of body composition assessment are highly relevant to research aimed at establishing dietary recommendations for nutritionally vulnerable populations of newborn infants, as well as to the clinical practice of caring for these infants. Chaired by Drs. Mandy Belfort and Sarah Taylor, this hot topic symposium will highlight exciting work being performed by outstanding early career investigators. Pioneering research approaches will be presented by Dr. Caty Buck from Yale School of Medicine, Dr. Emily Nagel from the University of Minnesota, Dr. Ariel Salas from the University of Alabama Birmingham, and Dr. Katherine Bell from Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. These investigators will highlight how their discoveries apply to establishing best practices in nutritional care and assessment early in the lifecourse, with the opportunity for lasting impact on health and development.

Learning Objectives:

Upon completion, participants will be able to determine the current evidence regarding infant nutritional assessment tools.
Upon completion, participants will be able to describe the influence of body composition on infant outcomes.
Upon completion, participants will be able to describe how research-based nutritional assessments will soon be available for clinical use.

Presentations:

2:00 PM – 2:10 PM ET

Nutritional assessment for preterm infants: why, how, and what next?
Speaker: Mandy Belfort, MD, MPH (she/her/hers) – Brigham and Women's Hospital
2:10 PM – 2:25 PM ET

Identifying markers of preterm infant metabolic health risk
Speaker: Catherine O. Buck, MD – Yale School of Medicine
2:25 PM – 2:40 PM ET

Body composition as primary outcome in neonatal clinical trials
Speaker: Ariel A. Salas, MD, MSPH – University of Alabama School of Medicine
2:40 PM – 2:55 PM ET

Exploring associations between maternal stress and infant outcomes
Speaker: Emily Nagel, PhD, RD, LD (she/her/hers) – University of Minnesota School of Public Health
2:55 PM – 3:10 PM ET

Advancing the Clinical Utility of Body Composition Measurement in Infancy: How we translate research tools into clinical care
Speaker: Katherine A. Bell, MD (she/her/hers) – Brigham and Women's Hospital
3:10 PM – 3:30 PM ET

Panel Question and Answer Session
Speaker: Sarah N. Taylor, MD, MSCR (she/her/hers) – Yale University