Speakers

Keep checking back as we unveil our four keynote speaker’s topics for the forum. The speakers will also assist teams in the afternoon to identify gaps in research and plan their transdisciplinary teams.

Janine Clayton, MD

Director of the NIH Office of Research on Women’s Health

ClaytonJanine Austin Clayton, M.D., is the Director of the Office of Research on Women’s Health, National Institutes of Health (NIH), and Associate Director for Research on Women’s Health, NIH, in the NIH Office of the Director. She is the author of over 80 scientific publications, journal articles, and book chapters. Prior to joining the Office of Research on Women’s Health, she was the Deputy Clinical Director of the National Eye Institute (NEI), NIH. A board certified ophthalmologist, Dr. Clayton’s research interests include autoimmune ocular diseases and the role of sex and gender in health and disease. Dr. Clayton has a particular interest in ocular surface disease and discovered a novel form of disease associated with premature ovarian insufficiency which affects young women. A native Washingtonian, Dr. Clayton received her undergraduate degree with Honors from the Johns Hopkins University, and her medical degree from Howard University College of Medicine. She completed a residency in ophthalmology at the Medical College of Virginia and fellowship training in Cornea and External Disease at the Wilmer Eye Institute at Johns Hopkins Hospital, and in Uveitis and Ocular Immunology at NEI. Dr. Clayton has been an attending physician and clinical investigator in cornea and uveitis at the NEI since 1996, conducting research on inflammatory diseases of the anterior segment. Her clinical research has ranged from randomized controlled trials of novel therapies for immune mediated ocular diseases to studies on the development of digital imaging techniques for the anterior segment. Dr. Clayton is a Fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine. She currently serves on the FDA Advisory Panel for Ophthalmic Devices; the medical and scientific advisory board of Tissue Banks International; and the editorial board of The Ocular Surface. She was selected as a Silver Fellow by the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology and a recipient of the Senior Achievement Award from the American Academy of Ophthalmology. Dr. Clayton has received several awards from her NIH peers in recognition of her leadership. She co-chairs the NIH Working Group on Women in Biomedical Careers with the NIH Director.

 

Matthew Gillman, MD, PhD

Director, Harvard Obesity Prevention Program

GillmanDr. Gillman is Professor in the Department of Population Medicine (DPM) at Harvard Medical School/Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute, and in the Department of Nutrition at Harvard School of Public Health. At the DPM, Dr. Gillman directs the Obesity Prevention Program, whose goal is to lessen obesity-related morbidity and mortality through epidemiologic, health services, and intervention research. His major research interests are in early life prevention of childhood and adult diseases, particularly obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. He is PI of Project Viva, an NIH-funded cohort study of pregnant women and children that has identified and quantified many pre- and peri-natal risk factors for obesity and its consequences, asthma and allergies, and cognition and behavior. He has served as Co-PI of the Coordinating Center of the US National Children’s Study, a member of the NHLBI Pediatric Cardiovascular Risk Reduction Initiative Expert Panel, a member of the Institute of Medicine Committee to Reexamine Pregnancy Weight Guidelines, a member of the NIDDK Clinical Obesity Research Panel, and a member of the Council of the Society for Developmental Origins of Health and Disease. He is co-editor of Maternal Obesity, published by Cambridge University Press. Dr. Gillman received the A. Clifford Barger Excellence in Mentoring Award from Harvard Medical School and the Faculty Mentoring Award from Harvard School of Public Health. He is also the recipient of the 2012 Greg Alexander Award for Advancing Public Health Knowledge through Epidemiology and Applied Research.

 

Deborah Tate, PhD

Associate Professor of Nutrition and Health Behavior and Director of the UNC Weight Research Program

TateDeborah F. Tate, PhD is an Associate Professor in the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is appointed in the Department of Health Behavior, the Department of Nutrition, and the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center. Tate has a Ph.D. in clinical psychology and specializes in behavioral prevention and treatment of obesity across the lifespan. Her research program focuses on two main areas: (a) strategies for improving both short and long-term weight loss with interventions and (b) the translation of obesity treatment programs using alternatives to clinic-based care with a particular focus on using technology. She has developed and evaluated in several of the first randomized trials methods for delivering comprehensive behavior change programs using the Internet and other technologies to deliver behavioral treatments for obesity. She has evaluated alternative methods for providing professional guidance in Internet programs including chats, webinars, and automated “virtual” counselors to determine the necessary amount of human intervention to produce sustainable behavior change. Her current NIH funded research examines delivery of obesity treatment programs in a stepped care fashion; weight gain prevention using face to face, web and mobile technology for young adults (18-35), translating Internet obesity treatment interventions for use with low-income English and Spanish speaking post-partum women participating in WIC; and conducting an effectiveness trial for tailored Internet weight control in primary care practices. She serves as the Intervention sub-committee chair for the NIH funded EARLY (Early Adulthood Reduction of Weight through Lifestyle Intervention) consortium of trials; 7 grants funded to examine weight loss and weight gain prevention using innovative technology based interventions in adults age 18-35. In addition to her own research, Dr. Tate is the Director of an NIH P30 Core (NCI) and a NORC (Nutrition Obesity Research Center – NIDDK) Core that focuses on assisting researchers conducting behavioral intervention research with particular emphasis on communications and technology based applications. She teaches an advanced doctoral course on the application of behavioral theory in developing and evaluating innovative health promotion and disease prevention interventions, a course on advanced nutrition intervention research methods, and serves as a standing member of the NIH PRDP study section.

 

Barry Popkin, PhD

Professor of Nutrition and author of The World is Fat

PopkinDr. Popkin has a PhD in agricultural economics and established the Division of Nutrition Epidemiology at UNC and later established and ran the UNC Interdisciplinary Obesity Center, funded by NIH. He has developed the concept of the Nutrition Transition, the study of the dynamic shifts in dietary intake and physical activity patterns and trends and obesity and other nutrition-related noncommunicable diseases and his research program focuses globally on understanding the shifts in stages of the transition and programs and policies to improve the population health linked with this transition (see www.nutrans.org). He has had a number of grants and wrote one book focused on women’s nutrition. His work focuses equally on the US. including long-term research on the economic and physical environment with CARDIA and the UNC Food Research Program which has developed a method to monitor changes all the way from food factories to the diet of Americans and is using this to evaluate book food company activities as well as those of retailers. His international research is equally large-scale. He was an original member of the G-7 first mission to work with the former Soviet Union and later Russia and has participated in an array of international initiatives organized by multilateral agencies around food, hunger and obesity. Popkin directs longitudinal surveys in China and Russia and is also involved in survey research in other countries, including Brazil, Mexico, the United Arab Emirates, India, Norway and the Philippines. He is actively involved at the national and global level in policy formulation for many countries, particularly Mexico, SE Asia and China. He has played a central role in placing the concerns of global obesity, its determinants and consequences on the global stage and is now actively involved in work on the program and policy side at the national level. He has received a number of major awards for his global contributions (India: Gopalan Award; UK Rank Science Prize; US Kellogg Prize for Outstanding International Nutrition Research; The Obesity Society Mickey Stunkard Lifetime Achievement Award). He has published over 390 refereed journal articles, is one of the most cited nutrition scholars in the world, and is the author of The World is Fat (January 2009, Avery-Penguin Publishers), translated into 9 languages.