For faculty member Armando Peña, forging his career path from postdoctoral fellow to assistant professor in the Department of Health & Wellness Design (HWD) began with a desire to make a difference in maternal and child health by fostering relationships with key community partners.
Peña was recently awarded funding by Indiana CTSI for two projects he is leading as principal investigator (PI). One explores a learning physical activity intervention in the hopes of preventing gestational diabetes in the amount of $50,000 for one year. The second is implementing a perinatal psychoeducation intervention to address trauma-related mental health at Riley Children’s Hospital; $100,000 in funding over the course of two years. Due to his experience with implementation science, Peña was engaged to work on the psychoeducation project by co-PI Camila Arnaudo, assistant professor of Clinical Psychiatry at the IU School of Medicine and coordinator Sarah Greenwell.
Originally graduating from Arizona State University with his Ph.D. in Exercise and Nutritional Sciences, Peña joined SPH-B as an HWD postdoctoral fellow in August 2022. While researching prediabetes and obesity in children as a doctoral student, he discovered data that showed infants who were exclusively fed breastmilk up to the recommended six months showed much lower risk of Type 2 Diabetes later in life. Not only that but observational data showed an indication breastfeeding also was associated with a lower risk in the mothers as well.
“I thought, wow, this is one intervention that can impact two generations,” says Peña. “I really got hooked on the science behind breastfeeding and the physiology of what is in breast milk.”
Peña discovered SPH-B thanks to a virtual talk hosted by former SPH-B Dean David Allison with The Obesity Society. Allison put him in touch with Professor Richard Holden who ultimately recruited and helped set him on the path for success, garnering grants for projects such as preparing the future implementation of a food insecurity intervention to reduce hypertension. Holden, along with assistant professor of Pediatrics, Deanna Reinoso, helped Peña establish connections with community outreach groups such as Eskenazi Health, Indiana WIC, the YMCA Greater Indianapolis, and the Indiana Department of Health.
“Being in HWD, you have a group of people dedicated to designing interventions rigorously and bringing the communities in,” says Peña, who also credits the support of The Center for Health by Design for his research success. “In Indiana, there are so many community-based organizations that are invested in maternal and child health. As a postdoc, I had help creating these connections and collaborations, and now as an assistant professor with my lab I can continue to build on them.”
In addition to impactful research, Peña is also invested in mentorship. Working with the Maternal and Child Health Program (MCH) and founding director Cecilia Obeng, Peña has trained seven undergraduates this past academic year, and more than 15 mentees in total during his time at IU, including supporting their publications and presentations at local and national conferences.
“The students here are amazing, and they do their own research based on data sets I provide,” says Peña. “I try to pass on some of my own training to understand that while we need to get the publications to advance our careers…our work doesn’t mean anything if we are not disseminating that information to the communities that help us do the research.”
In terms of balancing progress on these related but different projects related to maternal and child health, Peña says the community partner engagement—as well as support from his IU colleagues—is key for him to stay focused and motivated.
“These are my first exposures to running my own clinical trial and it is very cool but it can be overwhelming,” says Peña. “Working with people who are as motivated as I am to really do the work to help address these gaps in the health field—particularly the mental health aspects—has been key.”
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