What is your current research focus?
As I am working at the faculty of Public Health of the Silesian Medical University in Katowice, my research is focused on public health. My colleagues and I always pay attention to the possible impact of our research on medical practitioners and society.
Research conducted by our faculty benefits from cooperation with national and international centers and is often published in international journals, just like our study on social media’s role in internalizing body knowledge among women with different food preferences (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36767433/) carried out in cooperation with the University of Physical Education in Poznań and the University of Deusto (Spain).
What is Evidence Based Medicine and Evidence Based Nutrition? How does it affect the introduction of new recommendations and treatments?
Evidence Based Medicine (EBM) and Evidence Based Nutrition (EBN) are medicine and nutrition based on scientific evidence. These fields are a collection of the best reliable, up-to-date data to accurately and precisely apply the available scientific knowledge in a specific field to daily practice. The scientific evidence underpinning EBM and EBN is most often derived from experimental studies and individual phases of clinical trials.
Reliable scientific evidence is necessary for us to:
- use the best available diagnostic method.
- choose the best possible treatment,
- ensure that our choice has brought more benefit than harm.
In fact, in health and medical science, there is no place for theories that are not supported by facts based on research. Our personal experience or intuition is not enough to establish principles of good clinical practice. Credible and reliable conclusions require well-designed studies and often years of post-study observations. Evidence-based medicine and nutrition allows us to use the best available knowledge, gathered from the results of published scientific studies, and available medical information databases. Based on these, a group of many different specialists and experts in the field develops guidelines, standards, norms, consensus, and expert positions.
How did you come up with the idea for the research topic carried out in collaboration with Frontiers in Nutrition?
After the invitation to Frontiers in Nutrition, which I gladly accepted, I considered what topic would be particularly important, among the research we were doing. In view of the fact that two parts of the monograph will be published this year: “Women’s Health in Interdisciplinary Dimensions” Part I. Determinants of environmental conditions, Part II. Psychosocial Determinants (Silesian Medical University in Katowice), of which I am the initiator and scientific co-editor, I thought it was a very important aspect. The recent increase in the prevalence of nutrition-related disorders in the female population in the second half of the 20th century is likely the result of increasing life expectancy combined with exposure to environmental factors, including, of course, lifestyle, nutrition, physical activity and others. So far, the mechanism for the development of many disorders or diseases remains unknown, mainly due to multifactorial etiology. And although the average life expectancy of women has increased significantly over the past decades, there are still differences in health across populations, countries and regions. These are primarily due to different behavioral patterns of social roles, different lifestyles, or varied behaviors toward health and illness, which in turn are conditioned by a wide variety of socio-cultural factors.
The research topic I am pursuing at Frontiers in Nutrition: “Women’s Health in an Interdisciplinary Dimension – Determinants of Nutritional Disorders” addresses the needs of women, will focus on health promotion, disease prevention, and diagnosis and treatment of all nutrition-related conditions that affect physical and emotional well-being from a global perspective, and aims to provide a platform for authors reviewers and researchers worldwide to present original articles, qualitative studies, commentaries and systematic reviews on new developments in health promotion and the prevention, diagnosis and nutritional treatment of conditions for women. Which, in the future, I hope will result in a better definition of women’s health needs and the proper targeting of prevention, diagnosis, social support groups, and thus more effective assistance and the reduction of social and economic costs and compensation of social inequalities in health.
Dr. Karolina Krupa-Kotara, M.D., was invited by editor Thomas Neil, Ph.D., to be the originator and initiator of the research topic “Women’s Health in an Interdisciplinary Dimension – Determinants of Nutritional Disorders”in the prestigious journal Frontiers in Nutrition (6.590IF, 70MNSW).
How can collaboration with Frontiers in Nutrition help give Polish scientists exposure? Where should articles be submitted?
The special edition of Women’s Health in an Interdisciplinary Dimension will focus on health promotion, disease prevention, and diagnosis and treatment of all nutrition-related conditions that affect women’s physical and emotional well-being from a global perspective consistent with Evidence Based Medicine and Evidence Based Nutrition standards.
Abstracts or full-text articles should be submitted through the journal’s platform via this link.
- Deadline for submission of abstracts – April 18, 2023.
- Deadline for submission of manuscripts – August 16, 2023.
The goal is to provide a platform for authors, reviewers and researchers around the world to present original articles, qualitative studies, commentaries and systematic reviews on new developments in health promotion and the prevention, diagnosis and nutritional treatment of conditions in women.
Within the scope of the theme “Women’s Health from an Interdisciplinary Perspective,” papers are welcome on topics such as:
- • health inequalities
- • physical activity
- • lifestyle
- • microbiome/ microbiota
- • cardiovascular disease
- • obesity
- • nutritional support for fertility
- • pregnancy
- • breastfeeding and lactation
- • female cancers
- • hormones
- • menopause
- • hypothyroidism
- • insulin resistance
- • PCOS
- • nutritional prevention
Last but not least, I would like to emphasize that men’s health is not indifferent to us. Our faculty conducts many projects regarding men’s health. There is a lot to lean on in this field therefore we will definitely carry out similar projects for men.
Joanna Rancew
