Postdoctoral Researcher Receives NIH Funding for Study of Walking Cadence

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The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded Aston K. McCullough, a postdoctoral research associate in the department of kinesiology, a two-year, $438,698 grant under its program of Research Supplements to Promote Diversity in Health-Related Research.

A member of professor Catrine Tudor-Locke’s Physical Activity and Health Lab, McCullough is part of a team examining walking cadence as a measure of exercise intensity.

McCullough, who earned his doctorate in kinesiology from Columbia University Teachers College, has dedicated his early career to studying human activity as an independent and interdependent phenomenon in relationship to health across the human lifespan. The new award will fund McCullough’s ancillary study to help individualize cadence recommendations as well as better understand walking behavior and health outcomes in older adults aged 61 to 85 years.

“Walking is one of the most common forms of physical activity in older adults, and a crucial component of current physical activity recommendations is for adults to engage in at least 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity weekly,” McCullough says.

Study participants will complete physical activity assessments by filling out questionnaires and submitting results from wearable sensors, in addition to undergoing a cardiopulmonary exercise test in the lab. After collecting the data with his team, McCullough will develop algorithms that can determine individualized metabolic costs associated with various cadences in older adults. These equations will then be used to determine how fast an individual should walk to reach target activity intensities.