Towards Evidence-based Nutrition and Obesity Policy: Methods, Implementation, and Political Reality

Speakers

Scientific Organizing Committee

Sanjay Basu, MD, PhD

Stanford University

Sanjay Basu, MD, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Stanford University. He is a primary care physician and an epidemiologist with a focus on conducting operations research to improve programs designed to reduce cardiovascular disease risk among low-income populations. Dr. Basu received his undergraduate education at MIT, and a master's degree in medical anthropology through a Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford before completing his MD and PhD in epidemiology at Yale. He completed his medical training through the internal medicine residency program at the University of California in San Francisco, then joined Stanford's Prevention Research Center in September 2012. Dr. Basu’s research is focused on improving public health interventions that address cardiovascular disease risk, such as community-based nutrition programs and screening programs for undiagnosed diabetes. His research includes randomized trials of interventions in community-based settings, and the development of epidemiological models that integrate such trial data with health system data to improve the targeting and delivery of programs. His work also involves the development of novel methods to address causal inference problems when evaluating social programs that offer few opportunities for randomization and significant risks of selection bias. He previously worked at Partners in Health and Oxfam GB, then co-founded the organization Possible Health (formerly Nyaya Health). He currently serves on expert advisory panels for the United Nations, World Health Organization, World Heart Federation, the American Heart Association, and the Global Burden of Disease Project, among other roles. He was selected as one of the “Top 100 Global Thinkers” by Foreign Policy magazine in 2013 for his co-authorship of the book The Body Economic with David Stuckler of Oxford University. He has also received both the Weingarten Award in Medicine (2012) and the Rosenkranz Prize in Healthcare Research (2013).

Jason P. Block, MD, MPH

Harvard Medical School

Jason Block is a general internal medicine physician and Assistant Professor and Associate Director of the Obesity Prevention Program of the Department of Population Medicine at Harvard Medical School/Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute. He completed a primary care internal medicine residency and chief residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health and Society Scholar at the Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Block’s primary research interests are in neighborhood-level determinants of weight gain and obesity and the evaluation of governmental and institutional policies and other novel interventions to improve diet and combat obesity. He is a primary care physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, a preceptor for Brigham internal medicine residents in their continuity clinics, and a clinician in the Brigham and Women’s Weight Management Clinic.

Juan Angel Rivera Dommarco, PhD

National Institute of Public Health, Mexico

Juan Rivera, MS, PhD is founding Director of the Center for Research in Nutrition and Health at the National Institute of Public Health, a Professor of Nutrition at the School of Public Health of Mexico and an adjunct professor at the Rollins School of Public Health in Emory University in Atlanta, GA. He has published over 300 scientific publications on the epidemiology of malnutrition, the double burden of malnutrition (undernutrition and obesity), the short and long-term effects of undernutrition during early childhood, the nutritional status and dietary intake of the Mexican population and the evaluation of programs and policies to improve the nutritional status of populations. He has been advisor to the Government on the design of obesity prevention strategies and is currently evaluating a number of those policies. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and the Mexican Academy of Sciences, is a former President of the Global Nutrition Council at the American Society of Nutrition and is President Elect of the Latin American Society of Nutrition. He was honored with the 2010 Elsevier Scopus Award in Health Sciences (México) and the Kellogg International Nutrition Prize 2009 by the American Society for Nutrition.

Susan Finn, PhD, RD, FADA

Finn/Parks & Associates

Susan Finn, PhD, RD, FADA, a recognized leader and a respected communicator in the field of nutrition and health, is known for her ability to build successful partnerships with academia, professional associations and the business community. Her efforts to promote improved health and quality of life for all levels of society have been acknowledged by her peers in healthcare and in the business world. Currently, as president and CEO of the American Council for Fitness & Nutrition, Finn leads a nonprofit organization committed to helping Americans understand the benefits of eating healthfully and being more active. In addition, as a consultant to Fleishman-Hillard International Communications, she interprets and assesses the implications of nutrition research and helps communicate those findings to industry, consumers and the media. She is also an advisor to many public and private organizations concerned with nutrition and health. Finn was appointed by President George W. Bush to the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports.

Kristina H. Lewis, MD, MPH, SM

Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center

Kristina H. Lewis, MD, MPH, SM, is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Public Health Sciences at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center. She is an internal medicine physician practicing in the field of bariatrics. Dr. Lewis’ research focuses on developing and evaluating interventions for obesity and related comorbidities. This work ranges from comparative effectiveness studies of bariatric surgical procedures, to trials of novel behavioral interventions for diet, to studies of policy interventions for improving diet at the population-level. Dr. Lewis is currently serving as Chair-elect for the Health Services Research Section of The Obesity Society, and Chair of the Obesity, Diabetes and Nutrition-Related Diseases Working Group for the Sackler Institute for Nutrition Science.

Y. Claire Wang, MD, ScD

Columbia University

Dr. Wang is Associate Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, where she directs the MPH program in Comparative Effectiveness and Outcomes Research and co-directs the Obesity Prevention Initiative. She is a decision scientist and epidemiologist who uses mathematical models to inform policy. She is interested in the distribution of modifiable risk factors like diet, exercise, and preventive screening, and how they reduce disease risk across the population and in subgroups. Her present research focuses on obesity and cardiovascular disease prevention. Her work examined how various strategies and policies may help fight obesity in children and adolescents, and whether they are cost-effective. One of her research areas is the role of sugar-sweetened beverage consumption by children and adults and the health and economic impacts of levying excise taxes on these beverages. She chairs the Epidemiology section of The Obesity Society, and is currently a 2015-6 Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellow.

Amy R. Beaudreault, PhD

The Sackler Institute for Nutrition Science

Dr. Beaudreault is the Associate Director of The Sackler Institute for Nutrition Science at the New York Academy of Sciences. In this position, she manages day-to-day activities, including facilitating Working Groups, conducting research, providing technical assistance, leading scientific conferences, developing public-private partnerships, and expanding communication. Dr. Beaudreault has 15 years’ experience in strategic communication, quantitative and qualitative research methodologies, and program development, implementation, and evaluation. Prior to joining the Academy, Dr. Beaudreault managed the Ohio State University Extension Agricultural and Safety Health Program and The Great Lakes Center for Agricultural Safety and Health (funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention); used her public relations background while working in the research communication department at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, OH, with an initiative to  translate research to practice in biobehavioral health, perinatal research, and injury research and policy; and directed several U.S. federal contracts in Washington, DC, including contracts with the Department of Education and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. She holds a BS in Journalism from the E. W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University, and an MS in Agricultural Communication, a PhD in Agricultural Education and Extension, and a graduate certificate in survey research from The Ohio State University. Follow her on Twitter @amybeaud.

Julie Shlisky, PhD

The Sackler Institute for Nutrition Science

Julie joined the Sackler Institute at the New York Academy of Sciences in 2014 as Program Manager after a postdoctoral fellowship at the New York Obesity Research Center where she examined postprandial energy expenditure. She earned her doctorate in Nutritional Science from Penn State in 2012 where she conducted a 6-month diet and physical activity lifestyle intervention investigating an energy-restricted diet on body composition, metabolic parameters and bone health in premenopausal women. She brings experience from industry and the laboratory to her position at the Academy, having worked in research and development at DuPont after her undergraduate education in molecular biology.

Keynote Speakers

Sonia Angell, MD, MPH

New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene

Dr. Sonia Angell is a Deputy Commissioner at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, overseeing the newly created Division of Prevention and Primary Care. This Division works to advance population health by improving access to high-quality health services and health insurance and introducing innovative system changes that promote disease prevention and control. It builds upon a history of innovative policy and programming in primary health care delivery systems and communities by bringing together the existing bureaus of Chronic Disease Prevention and Tobacco Control, Primary Care Information Project, and Primary Care Access and Planning. Prior to rejoining the NYC DOHMH in August 2014, Dr. Angell was a Senior Advisor for Global Noncommunicable Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta. Dr. Angell is board certified in internal medicine and is an Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University and an Assistant Attending Physician at New York Presbyterian Hospital. She received her medical degree from the University of California San Francisco and completed her residency in Internal Medicine at Brigham Women's Hospital in Boston. She has a Diploma in Tropical Medicine and Hygiene from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and a Masters in Public Health, Epidemiology from the University of Michigan. She is a former Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar and is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians.

Rogan Kersh, PhD

Wake Forest University

Rogan Kersh received his BA from Wake Forest in 1986, and returned as provost and professor of political science in July 2012. In this role he oversees the University’s academic mission and programs, working closely with President Hatch, the deans, and faculty and administrative colleagues to support and enhance research, teaching, and graduate and undergraduate programs of the College of Arts and Sciences as well as Wake Forest’s Schools of Business, Divinity and Law. He also coordinates academic programming with the administration of the School of Medicine.  Prior to arriving at WFU, Kersh was associate dean of NYU’s Wagner School of Public Service, where he was professor of public policy.

Kersh has published three books, on American political history and on health policy; a new edition of his By the People: Debating American Government (with James Morone) will be published in 2016 by Oxford University Press. He has published over 50 academic articles, and does frequent media commentary on U.S. politics. He has been a Mellon Fellow in the Humanities, a Luce Scholar, a Robert Wood Johnson Fellow, and is an elected Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. In 15 years’ teaching at Yale, Syracuse, and NYU he won four university-wide teaching awards. Kersh received his PhD in political science from Yale in 1996, and has professional experience in the U.S. Congress, the British Parliament, and at think tanks in Tokyo and Washington, DC.

Speakers

Eliza Barclay, MA

NPR

Eliza Barclay is a reporter and editor of NPR’s James Beard Award-winning food blog, The Salt. She covers food, health, and science on the web and occasionally on the air. Before landing at NPR, she wrote about the environment, immigration, economic development, and international politics. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, FORTUNE, National Geographic News, and The Lancet. She holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of California-Berkeley and a master’s degree from Johns Hopkins University. As a graduate student in 2009, she received an Innovations Grant from the Center for a Livable Future at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, which she used to research rising meat consumption in China.

Sanjay Basu, MD, PhD

Stanford University

Sanjay Basu, MD, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Stanford University. He is a primary care physician and an epidemiologist with a focus on conducting operations research to improve programs designed to reduce cardiovascular disease risk among low-income populations. Dr. Basu received his undergraduate education at MIT, and a master's degree in medical anthropology through a Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford before completing his MD and PhD in epidemiology at Yale. He completed his medical training through the internal medicine residency program at the University of California in San Francisco, then joined Stanford's Prevention Research Center in September 2012. Dr. Basu’s research is focused on improving public health interventions that address cardiovascular disease risk, such as community-based nutrition programs and screening programs for undiagnosed diabetes. His research includes randomized trials of interventions in community-based settings, and the development of epidemiological models that integrate such trial data with health system data to improve the targeting and delivery of programs. His work also involves the development of novel methods to address causal inference problems when evaluating social programs that offer few opportunities for randomization and significant risks of selection bias. He previously worked at Partners in Health and Oxfam GB, then co-founded the organization Possible Health (formerly Nyaya Health). He currently serves on expert advisory panels for the United Nations, World Health Organization, World Heart Federation, the American Heart Association, and the Global Burden of Disease Project, among other roles. He was selected as one of the “Top 100 Global Thinkers” by Foreign Policy magazine in 2013 for his co-authorship of the book The Body Economic with David Stuckler of Oxford University. He has also received both the Weingarten Award in Medicine (2012) and the Rosenkranz Prize in Healthcare Research (2013).

Julia Belluz, MSc

Vox.com

Julia Belluz is a National Magazine Award-winning journalist covering medicine and public health for Vox.com. She was a 2013-14 Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT. Julia’s writing has appeared in Maclean’s, the British Medical Journal, the Medical Post, the Globe and Mail, the National Post, Slate, the Times (of London), the Economist, and other publications. Outside of reporting, Julia speaks regularly at health care and journalism conferences the world over. She holds an MSc from the London School of Economics and a BA from Ryerson University’s School of Journalism. Find her on Twitter @JuliaOfToronto.

Jason P. Block, MD, MPH

Harvard Medical School

Jason Block is a general internal medicine physician and Assistant Professor and Associate Director of the Obesity Prevention Program of the Department of Population Medicine at Harvard Medical School/Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute. He completed a primary care internal medicine residency and chief residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health and Society Scholar at the Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Block’s primary research interests are in neighborhood-level determinants of weight gain and obesity and the evaluation of governmental and institutional policies and other novel interventions to improve diet and combat obesity. He is a primary care physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, a preceptor for Brigham internal medicine residents in their continuity clinics, and a clinician in the Brigham and Women’s Weight Management Clinic.

Juan Angel Rivera Dommarco, PhD

National Institute of Public Health, Mexico

Juan Rivera, MS, PhD is founding Director of the Center for Research in Nutrition and Health at the National Institute of Public Health, a Professor of Nutrition at the School of Public Health of Mexico and an adjunct professor at the Rollins School of Public Health in Emory University in Atlanta, GA. He has published over 300 scientific publications on the epidemiology of malnutrition, the double burden of malnutrition (undernutrition and obesity), the short and long-term effects of undernutrition during early childhood, the nutritional status and dietary intake of the Mexican population and the evaluation of programs and policies to improve the nutritional status of populations. He has been advisor to the Government on the design of obesity prevention strategies and is currently evaluating a number of those policies. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and the Mexican Academy of Sciences, is a former President of the Global Nutrition Council at the American Society of Nutrition and is President Elect of the Latin American Society of Nutrition. He was honored with the 2010 Elsevier Scopus Award in Health Sciences (México) and the Kellogg International Nutrition Prize 2009 by the American Society for Nutrition.

Helena Bottemiller Evich, BA

Politico

Helena Bottemiller Evich is a senior food and agriculture reporter at POLITICO, where she covers a variety of policy issues, from school lunch to food safety, through a political lens. Before joining POLITICO, Helena spent four years reporting on food politics and policy at Food Safety News, where she covered Congress, the Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Helena's work has also appeared in the Columbia Journalism Review and on NBC News. A native of Washington state and an alumna of Claremont McKenna College, she now lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband.

Matthew Harding, PhD

Duke University

Matthew Harding, PhD, is the director of the Behavioral Economics and Healthy Food Choice Research (BECR) Center and an Assistant Professor in the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University. Harding is an economist who conducts applied econometric research to understand how individuals make consumption choices, and to quantify the individual and social welfare impact of their choices. Building on a rigorous foundation of econometric methods, he explores the potential of Big Data to estimate better models and predict the choices made by individuals, while taking into account recent developments in behavioral economics. He also designs and implements large scale field experiments in collaboration with industry leaders to understand the unintended social consequences of individual choices and the extent to which behavioral nudges and price based mechanisms can be used as cost-effective means of improving individual and social welfare. He is a US Chamber of Commerce Fellow in Data Driven Innovation with a special focus on food policy.

Terry Huang, PhD, MPH

CUNY School of Public Health

Terry Huang is Professor at the City University of New York School of Public Health. He chaired the Department of Health Promotion at UNMC from 2010-2014. In addition, Dr. Huang is Co-Founder and Senior Advisor of the National Collaborative on Childhood Obesity Research (NCCOR), which coordinates activities across the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Prior to returning to academia, Dr. Huang was Director of the Obesity Research Strategic Core at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development where he played a leading role in developing new national research directions and funding priorities. Dr. Huang is a global leader on creative solutions for obesity and chronic disease, systems-oriented prevention strategies, cross-sectoral partnerships, and the translation of science to policy. Dr. Huang has lectured extensively on these topics and published over 100 articles. He has also served as a consultant or expert for the Institute of Medicine, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition, Access to Nutrition Foundation, EPODE International Network, among other notable organizations. For his work with NCCOR, Dr. Huang received the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary’s Innovation Award in 2010 and the NIH Director’s Award in 2011. In addition, he received the National Cancer Institute Award of Merit in 2012 and was named UNMC Distinguished Scientist in 2013. He is an alumnus of the American Swiss Foundation Young Leaders Program. Dr. Huang holds a PhD in Preventive Medicine and an MPH from the University of Southern California, and a BA in Psychology from McGill University. He is Board Certified in Public Health (CPH) and Fellow and Program Chair of The Obesity Society.

Nancy Huehnergarth, BA

Nancy F. Huehnergarth Consulting

Nancy Huehnergarth is a commentator, journalist and the president of Nancy F. Huehnergarth Consulting, which specializes in nutrition and physical activity advocacy and policy change. She is the former executive director of the New York State Healthy Eating and Physical Activity Alliance (NYSHEPA). Since 2002, Nancy has advocated at the local, state and federal level for a variety of measures including school nutrition standards, calorie labeling, sugary drink tax, nutrition standards for kid’s meals, Complete Streets, and the sugary drink warning label. She testified before the U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee on the need for federal nutrition standards for competitive foods sold in schools and has testified before the NYS Legislature and the NYC Board of Health as well as numerous local legislatures. Nancy has been interviewed on radio, television, in print, online and on video, and has been the topic of magazine and newspaper articles. She is a regular contributor to numerous publications including Huffington Post, Food Safety News, The Hill and Civil Eats.

Barbara Laraia, PhD, MPH

University of California Berkeley

Barbara Laraia, RD, MPH, PhD is an Associate Professor, and Chair of the Public Health Nutrition Program in the Division of Community Health and Human Development at University of California, Berkeley.  She oversees a number of projects that investigate social determinants of eating behaviors, dietary intake and metabolic outcomes.  Her research program focuses on the influence of contextual level effects on cardiometabolic risk factors and pregnancy outcomes, especially among vulnerable populations. Contextual level effects refer to the household food environment, namely household food insecurity, as well as the neighborhood or built environment measured as one's food, physical activity and social environment. Her current NIH study “Race, stress and dysregulated eating: Maternal to child transmission of obesity” focuses on early life adverse events, stress and non-homeostatic eating behaviors, and how these lead to dietary intake and metabolic dysregulation. She is also PI on the NIH funded study “Novel Interventions to Reduce Stress-Related Non-homeostatic Eating” that is implementing stress reduction and healthy eating and movement interventions for middle- and low-income overweight/obese pregnant women. Each of these research projects are transdisciplinary, bringing together colleagues from economics, geography, health psychology, social epidemiology and biostatistics to identify new ways of analyzing and addressing the observed health disparities. In 2012, she served as a member of the Institute of Medicine Committee on the Examination of the Adequacy of Food Resources and SNAP Allotments.

Jeff Niederdeppe, PhD

Cornell University

Jeff Niederdeppe (PhD, 2006, University of Pennsylvania) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at Cornell University. His research examines the mechanisms and effects of mass media campaigns, strategic health messages, and news coverage in shaping health behavior, health disparities, and social policy. He has published over 85 peer-reviewed articles and his work has been funded in recent years by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. National Science Foundation, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. He serves on the editorial board for five journals.