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Andrew Agbaje, MD, MPH, PhD, FACC, FESC, FAHA, FNYAM

Associate Professor of Clinical Epidemiology and Child Health
University of Eastern Finland
Kuopio, Pohjois-Savo, Finland

Andrew Agbaje MD, MPH, PhD, FACC, FESC, FAHA, FNYAM, is an Associate Professor of Clinical Epidemiology and Child Health at the University of Eastern Finland, Kuopio, Finland. He is the Principal Investigator of UndeRstanding FITness and Cardiometabolic Health In Little Darlings (urFIT-child). He was awarded the 2024 European Association for the Study of Obesity-Novo Nordisk Foundation New Investigator Award for Childhood Obesity which included a 300,000 DKK (44,000 USD) research grant. He discovered arterial stiffness as a novel risk factor for paediatric obesity and insulin resistance and identified adolescence as the critical time to interrupt the fat mass-insulin resistance pathologic cycle. He demonstrated light-intensity physical activity as a highly effective antidote for reversing excessive fat deposits induced by childhood sedentariness. He discovered waist circumference-to-height ratio as a specific surrogate for both total body fat mass and trunk fat mass but not muscle mass that could replace body mass index (BMI) in assessing childhood obesity. Subsequently, he was interviewed LIVE on BBC World News TV to discuss the novel findings. Agbaje developed a freely accessible waist-to-height ratio fat mass calculator and cutpoints that better identify excess adiposity in children, adolescents, and young adults than BMI. https://urfit-child.com/waist-height-calculator/. The new waist-to-height ratio cutpoints have been externally validated with the US National Health and Nutrition Survey (NHANES) multiracial middle-aged adults’ data for detecting the risk of type 2 diabetes, metabolic-associated steatotic liver diseases and liver fibrosis/cirrhosis and hypertension. The American Heart Association selected Agbaje’s study on childhood sedentariness as a risk factor for premature cardiac damage as one of the world’s most significant advances in cardiovascular research in 2024. He was featured on the Endocrine Society's ENDOCRINE NEWS March 2024 cover page. https://endocrinenews.endocrine.org/wp-content/uploads/EN_03_2024_WebRev.pdf. He has received several international awards from the American Heart Association, European Society of Cardiology, Endocrine Society, etc. He has published original articles in very high-impact factor journals such as Nature Communications, Diabetes Care, and Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC) as a first or single author. He is an Associate Editor in the Journal of Cachexia, Sarcopenia, and Muscle. Agbaje has been interviewed by the world’s major news outlets, such as CNN and BBC. In the last year, his research findings were published by 2000 news outlets globally with a media reach of 5.5 billion and an altmetric score of >4700. He has granted podcast interviews on childhood obesity and dyslipidemia prevention across several continents. He supervises 7 PhD students and several MPH postgraduate and MD undergraduate students.

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