Garrett Ash: From Runner to Researcher

all this week, national nurses week, we’ll be showcasing just a few of the many amazing students and faculty that make yale school of nursing a singular place for scholarship and leadership. their stories are featured in the latest edition of yale nursing matters magazine which will be posted online this friday. 

Sometimes the road to a career is straightforward. At other times it evolves as personal interests shape life experiences.  Garrett Ash, PhD, CSCS loved to run and started participating in marathons after completing his bachelor’s degree in chemistry. “I became very interested in how the body responds to exercise and I decided I wanted to do a project involving the elite Olympic runners from east Africa,” Dr. Ash said.

He was also interested in using sports to help third world countries; mainly Ethiopia and Kenya, where long distance running could help bolster the economy. These interests led him to Oxford University and to research in Ethiopia for his master’s degree in exercise physiology. While in Africa, Dr. Ash started “Running Across Borders,” a charity with the mission of expanding economic opportunity to east African youth through long distance running.  

Although his master’s project, examining associations between angiotensin-converting enzyme genetic polymorphisms and elite Olympic performance among Ethiopian distance runners, didn’t find any such associations, he said, “It was a great project that got me really excited about sports science.” His next step was a PhD in exercise physiology at the University of Connecticut, where he worked on studies related to hypertension and exercise.

In January 2016, Dr. Ash began at YSN as a post-doctorate fellow focusing on type 1 diabetes. He is the principal investigator for the “Bright 1 Bodies Exercise and Discussions Program for Teens with Type 1 Diabetes,” which utilizes the Yale Bright Bodies curriculum. “Bright Bodies has been open to teens who have obesity, pre-diabetes or type 2 diabetes,” said Dr. Ash. “But we’ve never run a program like this for teens with type 1 diabetes.”

The 12-week program combines behavioral curricula, developed by YSN’s Margaret Grey, DrPH, RN, FAAN and Robin Whittemore, PhD, APRN, FAAN, for type 1 diabetes with the exercise, healthy diet and lifestyles program from Bright Bodies. The study has enrolled 18 teens from the Yale Children’s Diabetes program that participate in weekly exercise classes along with diabetes education and coping skills discussions. The study measures each participant’s clinical profile, diabetes management, metabolic health and blood work to look at some of the epigenetic factors.

Dr. Ash is also coordinating the “Teens Connect” study for co-PIs Dr. Grey and Jacquelyn Taylor, PhD, PNP-BC, RN, FAHA, FAAN. In this online program, participants receive coping skills training and diabetes education with their DNA and biomarkers of stress tested at baseline and post-intervention. “We sample cortisol and some other stress related molecules at home over the course of a morning to check the circadian rhythm of cortisol,” he explained. “The overall goal is to look at these physiological indicators of stress along with self-reported stress to see if the interventions will improve the physiological markers that indicate stress reduction, and if this relates to better blood sugar control.”

Because much of his earlier work was done with community populations, Dr. Ash said that working with Drs. Grey, Whittemore and Taylor has taught him lot about the clinical world. He hopes to continue to do type 1 diabetes research. “It’s not an easy population to study because you need access to a patient population and healthcare providers and faculty members who know about it. It is a rare and unique opportunity that Yale has set up for post-docs to train in. I feel really fortunate that I’ve had the chance to get involved.”