Is it a little too easy to find your way to the fridge in the middle of the night? That’s one of the questions psychologist and Upper Arlington resident Charles Emery is trying to answer.
Emery is leading a research team at the Ohio State University seeking to correlate personal health, diet and activities with the layout of homes.
Emery, a professor of psychology and internal medicine at OSU, has spent the last 18 years researching behavioral and psychological factors that are associated with health conditions, eating, aging and activity, among other topics.
He earned an undergraduate degree in psychology at Columbia University in New York City. “I considered the pre-med route, but my core interest was in brain function and mental health,” which he could best study through clinical psychology, Emery says.
After graduation, he thought about switching fields to go into architecture and took an internship working on a model community being built in the desert near Phoenix, Ariz., in which housing was compacted into a small area.
Emery’s current study ties back to his long-lived curiosity on the subject.
“My interest in general is about health, but (the study) looks to my interest in architecture,” he says.
Four of Emery’s research assistants, working in two-member teams, are visiting the homes of 100 central Ohio volunteers to document via photographs how home interiors, food storage areas and other architectural features, such as stairs, might affect access to food. Food purchases are catalogued and activities listed. In addition, researchers will measure volunteers’ cholesterol, blood sugar, body fat percentage and body sizes and question them about their stress and social support.
For example, people may buy certain foods and store them near where they spend their time, such as their favorite easy chair, Emery says. By next fall, Emery expects to report results of the project, which will look at “what extent environment affects health.” It’s a collaborative effort with Jack Nasar, a professor of architecture, and Diane Habash, a nutritionist in the OSU medical center, who will evaluate the data and draw any conclusions that might be reported.
“(It’s) completely new territory for me,” says Emery.
After leaving his internship in the desert, Emery earned his doctorate at the University of Southern California, during which time he met his wife, Edith Pattou, a library science major. Post-graduation, he took an internship at Denver University, then earned a fellowship at Duke University in Durham, N.C., where he worked in Duke’s behavioral aging center and health psychology programs until he became a faculty member in psychology.
While there, he expanded his training into physical health outcomes and collaborated on several studies examining the effects of physical exercise on psychological and cognitive functioning among healthy older adults. He also focused on patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and how physical activity affected their psychological and cognitive functions.
The couple’s move to Ohio was triggered when a former colleague, a Duke cardiologist with an interest in psychology, recommended Emery for a position at OSU. Emery was interviewed and accepted the job. At the time, he knew nothing about the state.
“I was one of those people who flew over Ohio….I knew it was there,” Emery says.
What drew him here? “(I was) really impressed with the resources” at the university’s medical facilities, Emery says.
Since he arrived in 1995, Emery has published more than 50 papers and 15 book chapters, many co-authored with research assistants.
He guides ongoing studies with those students working from a lab in the Martha Morehead Medical Plaza, the university’s center for after-care of several issues, such lifestyle changes for stomach bypass surgery patients. He’s in the Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research but doesn’t work with patients.
His students continually do research. Current projects are examining how continual use of pedometers impacts such psychological factors as the will to live or hope. Another study is of adolescent and adult cystic fibrosis patients and how disclosure and stigma of the disease affects their physical and mental health. Yet another study measures how those in weight loss programs are affected by the perceived stigma of obesity, their coping strategies and their knowledge about obesity.
One of Emery’s earlier studies focused on how women dealt emotionally with congestive heart failure. It found that some women coped worse than others the more they knew about their affliction and that clinicians should consider patients’ ability to cope with their problem when discussing it with them. For some, more information is better, but “for patients who are greater in denial, knowledge seemed to be a negative factor,” Emery says.
The professor says his research findings have been used across the board in the medical world: physicians, rehabilitation facilities, psychologists and other researchers. Findings about exercise for COPD patients have been used to develop guidelines for pulmonary rehabilitation programs.
Emery and Pattou, author of three novels and a picture book, have lived in UA since they moved to central Ohio. Their daughter, Vita (Victoria), attended UA schools and is currently working an internship in Chicago as she prepares to seek a doctorate in psychology.
Emery is cognizant of exercise. His wife and he usually walk for an hour after dinner. He sometimes walks to catch the university shuttle bus to campus or rides his bike. And while his main focus is research, Emery teaches one class each year about advanced aging and health.
Duane St. Clair is a contributing editor. Feedback welcome at laurand@cityscenemediagroup.com.
