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WIC Food Packages: Time for a Change (2006)

Chapter: Appendix G Biographical Sketches of Committee Members

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Suggested Citation:"Appendix G Biographical Sketches of Committee Members." Institute of Medicine. 2006. WIC Food Packages: Time for a Change. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11280.
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G
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES OF COMMITTEE MEMBERS

BARBARA L. DEVANEY, Ph.D., is an economist and senior fellow at Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. (Princeton, NJ). Dr. Devaney’s expertise is in the areas of food assistance and child health programs and the nutrition policies that affect these programs. She has over 20 years of experience in designing and conducting program evaluations and has conducted numerous studies of the WIC Program, the Food Stamp Program, and school nutrition programs. She was the project director for the Feeding Infants and Toddlers Study (FITS) for the Gerber Products Company in which data on food and nutrient intakes of infants and toddlers were collected and analyzed (2001–2003). In addition, Dr. Devaney conducted analyses of the effects of WIC participation on infant mortality and very low birth-weight among Medicaid newborns, and has investigated the infant feeding practices, and health care utilization of infant WIC participants. Dr. Devaney has served on several Institute of Medicine panels including the Subcommittee on Interpretation and Uses of Dietary Reference Intakes and the Committee on Scientific Evaluation of the WIC Nutrition Risk Criteria. Dr. Devaney earned a B.A. degree in economics from Mount Holyoke College (South Hadley, MA) and a Ph.D. degree in economics from the University of Michigan.


GEORGE M. GRAY, Ph.D., is lecturer on risk analysis in the Department of Health Policy and Management in the School of Public Health at Harvard University. Dr Gray is also Executive Director of the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis. His primary research interests are risk characterization and risk communication (with an emphasis on agriculture, food safety, and

Suggested Citation:"Appendix G Biographical Sketches of Committee Members." Institute of Medicine. 2006. WIC Food Packages: Time for a Change. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11280.
×

chemicals in the environment). Other interests include the scientific basis of human health risk assessment, application of risk assessment to policy decisions, and risk/risk tradeoffs in risk management. Dr. Gray receives research support from numerous sources, including the National Food Processors Association Research Foundation. Dr. Gray has served on various panels including the Risk Assessment Task Force of the Society of Toxicology, the Food Advisory Committee of the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN) at FDA, and the National Advisory Environmental Health Science Council of NIEHS. Dr. Gray earned a B.S. degree from the University of Michigan and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Rochester.


GAIL G. HARRISON, Ph.D., is professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences at the School of Public Health of the University of California—Los Angeles (UCLA). Dr. Harrison is also Senior Research Scientist in the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research and associate director of the Program for Healthy and At-Risk Populations in the Division of Cancer Prevention and Control, UCLA/Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. Dr. Harrison’s interests include pediatric and maternal nutrition, dietary and nutritional status assessment, food security, and international health and nutrition. Her recent research interests include assessment of variation in dietary intake patterns, cancer-protective interventions, estimation of dietary content of isoflavones, and changes in diet and prevalence of chronic diseases in developing countries. Dr. Harrison has been a member of the Food and Nutrition Board and has served on several Institute of Medicine panels including the Committee on Implications of Dioxin in the Food Supply, the Committee on Scientific Evaluation of WIC Nutrition Risk Criteria, the Committee on Food Consumption Patterns, and the Committee on International Nutrition Programs. She has served as a technical consultant to the WIC program of the Public Health Foundation of Los Angeles and to USDA’s Agricultural Research Service and Economic Research Service. Dr. Harrison earned a B.S. degree in foods and nutrition from the University of California—Santa Barbara, an M.N.S. (nutritional sciences) degree from Cornell University, and a Ph.D. degree in biological anthropology at the University of Arizona. She was elected to the Institute of Medicine in 2003.


HELEN H. JENSEN, Ph.D., is professor in the Department of Economics in the College of Agriculture at Iowa State University (ISU). Dr. Jensen is also head of the Food and Nutrition Policy Division in the Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) at ISU. Her research focuses on nutrition policies, food assistance programs, food security issues, analysis of food demand, food hazard control options, food safety (with empha-

Suggested Citation:"Appendix G Biographical Sketches of Committee Members." Institute of Medicine. 2006. WIC Food Packages: Time for a Change. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11280.
×

sis on the economics of food safety), and health economics. Dr. Jensen’s current research includes participation in an evaluation of the nutrition education component of the WIC Program; her part in this competitive grant to the Iowa Department of Public Health from the Food and Nutrition Service of the USDA is analysis of the cost-effectiveness of the nutrition education intervention. Dr. Jensen currently serves on the Committee on National Statistics’ (CNSTAT) Panel to review USDA’s Measurement of Food Insecurity and Hunger and has served on several National Research Council panels including the Committee on Assessing the Nation’s Framework for Addressing Animal Diseases (where she is currently serving), the Committee on Biological Threats to Agricultural Plants and Animals, and the Panel on Animal Health and Veterinary Medicine. Dr. Jensen earned a B.A. degree in economics from Carleton College (Northfield, MN), an M.S. degree in agricultural and applied economics from the University of Minnesota, and a Ph.D. degree in agricultural economics from the University of Wisconsin—Madison.


LUCIA L. KAISER, Ph.D., R.D., is Cooperative Extension Specialist in the Department of Nutrition in the College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences at the University of California—Davis. Dr. Kaiser’s research interests include the impact of acculturation and food security on the child/ parent feeding relationship among Latinos and evaluation of nutrition education. She served in WIC programs in California for six years as supervising public health nutritionist and regional nutrition consultant. Dr. Kaiser currently administers a USDA/ Economic Research Service Small Grants Program to examine the impact of food assistance on nutrition. Dr. Kaiser earned a B.S. degree in biology from the College of William and Mary, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in nutrition from the University of California—Davis.


JEAN D. KINSEY, Ph.D., is professor of consumption economics in the Department of Applied Economics in the College of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Sciences at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Kinsey is also the Co-Director of The Food Industry Center that focuses on how various retailers in the food industry serve consumers and how retailers and suppliers interact in food distribution channels. The Food Industry Center at the University of Minnesota is one of 13 industry study centers funded by the nonprofit Sloan Foundation. Dr. Kinsey’s research interests include food consumption trends, consumer buying behavior, food safety and consumer confidence, demographic changes in households, food industry structure, trends in food distribution and retail sales, effects of electronic technology on efficiency in retail outlets, economic effects of health and safety regulations, and regulation in the food industry. Dr. Kinsey earned a B.A. degree

Suggested Citation:"Appendix G Biographical Sketches of Committee Members." Institute of Medicine. 2006. WIC Food Packages: Time for a Change. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11280.
×

in home economics from St. Olaf College (Northfield, MN) and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California—Davis in consumer economics and agricultural economics, respectively. Dr. Kinsey was appointed a resident fellow at the National Center for Food and Agricultural Policy, Resources for the Future (1986–1987, Washington, DC); a distinguished fellow of the American Council on Consumer Interests (1997); and a fellow of the American Agricultural Economics Association (2000).


SUZANNE P. MURPHY, Ph.D., R.D., is a research professor at the Cancer Research Center of Hawaii at the University of Hawaii (Honolulu, HI) and director of the Nutrition Support Shared Resource at the center. Dr. Murphy’s research interests include dietary assessment methodology, development of food composition databases (with emphasis on inclusion of ethnic foods), communication of nutrition principles (with emphasis on multicultural populations), and nutritional epidemiology of chronic diseases (with emphasis on cancer and obesity). She has served as a member of the National Nutrition Monitoring Advisory Council and as vice-chair of the 2000 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee. Dr. Murphy has served on several Institute of Medicine panels including the Subcommittee on Interpretation and Uses of Dietary Reference Intakes, which she chaired for two years; the Subcommittee on Upper Safe Reference Levels of Nutrients, and the Panel on Calcium and Related Nutrients; Dr. Murphy earned a B.S. degree in mathematics from Temple University, Philadelphia, an M.S. degree in molecular biology from San Francisco State University, and a Ph.D. degree in nutrition from the University of California—Berkeley.


ANGELA M. ODOMS-YOUNG, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of Public and Community Health in the School of Allied Health Professions of the College of Health and Human Sciences at Northern Illinois University (Dekalb, IL). Prior to her current position, Dr. Odoms-Young completed a Family Research Consortium Postdoctoral Fellowship focused on understanding family processes in diverse populations at the Pennsylvania State University and University of Illinois—Urbana-Champaign and a Community Health Scholars Fellowship in community-based research at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. Her research and teaching focus on race, poverty, and health; community-based participatory research; obesity prevention and management; religion and health (with emphasis on health issues impacting Muslim women); minority health (with emphasis on health disparities in minority populations and health perceptions among low-income families); health promotion (with emphasis on the lay health advisor model); and health education (with emphasis on communicating nutrition principles to minority families). Dr. Odoms-Young’s research experience included participation in Welfare, Children, and Families: A Three-

Suggested Citation:"Appendix G Biographical Sketches of Committee Members." Institute of Medicine. 2006. WIC Food Packages: Time for a Change. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11280.
×

City Ethnographic Study where she was interested in the influence of poverty on the nutrition and health beliefs of low-income women with young children. Dr. Odoms-Young earned a B.S. degree in foods and nutrition from the University of Illinois—Urbana/Champaign and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Cornell University in human nutrition and community nutrition, respectively.


KAREN E. PETERSON, Sc.D., R.D., is Associate Professor and Director of Public Health Nutrition in the Department of Nutrition with a joint appointment in the Department of Society, Human Development and Health in the School of Public Health at Harvard University. Her research focuses on biosocial and environmental determinants of body size and growth during critical periods of behavioral and biologic adaptation and the application of these principles to the design and evaluation of surveillance systems and of community-based interventions addressing overweight and undernutrition among low-income, multiethnic populations in the United States and Latin America. Dr. Peterson served for seven years in the Massachusetts WIC Program as a nutritionist and as a program director. Her current research includes examination of dietary behaviors on weight statue of children and new mothers enrolled in WIC. Dr. Peterson earned a B.S. degree in foods and nutrition from the University of Utah, completed her dietetics internship at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, Boston, MA, and received a D.Sc. degree in nutrition from the School of Public Health at Harvard University. She chaired the CDC-funded “Building Comprehensive Obesity Surveillance” national workgroup and is currently President of the Maternal and Child Health Council of the Association of Schools of Public Health and President of the Graduate Faculties of Public Health Nutrition.


ANNA MARIA SIEGA-RIZ, Ph.D., R.D., is associate professor in the Department of Maternal and Child Health and the Department of Nutrition in the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina (UNC)—Chapel Hill. Dr. Siega-Riz is a fellow at the Carolina Population Center and director of the Nutrition Epidemiology Core for the Clinical Nutrition Research Center in the Department of Nutrition also at UNC—Chapel Hill. Her research focuses on reproductive and minority health (with emphasis on maternal nutritional status and how it affects birth outcomes). Dr. Siega-Riz expertise includes maternal and early childhood health, maternal nutrition (with emphasis on iron, zinc, folate, and vitamin C), reproductive epidemiology, and effects of participation in the WIC Program. She approaches her research from a multidisciplinary team perspective as an effective way to address complex problems such as prematurity, fetal programming, and racial disparities in reproductive outcomes. Dr. Siega-Riz earned

Suggested Citation:"Appendix G Biographical Sketches of Committee Members." Institute of Medicine. 2006. WIC Food Packages: Time for a Change. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11280.
×

a B.S.P.H. degree in nutrition from the School of Public Health at the UNC—Chapel Hill; an M.S. degree in food, nutrition, and food service management from UNC—Greensboro; and a Ph.D. degree in nutrition and epidemiology from the School of Public Health at UNC—Chapel Hill. She received the Mary C. Egan Award (2000; from the American Public Health Association—Food and Nutrition Section) which recognizes professional contributions and outstanding services of public health nutritionists.


VIRGINIA A. STALLINGS, M.D., is the Jean A. Cortner Endowed Chair in Pediatric Gastroenterology, director of the Nutrition Center, and deputy director of the Joseph Stokes Jr. Research Institute at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Dr. Stallings is also professor of pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Her research interests include pediatric nutrition, nutrition science (with emphasis on evaluation of dietary intake and energy expenditure), and chronic disease (with emphasis on nutrition-related issues of children and adolescents with chronic illnesses). Dr. Stallings is on the board of the Dannon Institute and serves as a consultant on pediatric nutrition and educational issues to the Bristol-Myers/Squibb Foundation and Mead-Johnson Nutritionals. Dr. Stallings has served on several Institute of Medicine panels including the Food and Nutrition Board, the Committee on the Scientific Basis of Dietary Risk Eligibility Criteria for the WIC Program, and the Committee on Nutrition Services for Medicare Beneficiaries. Dr. Stallings received a B.S. degree in nutrition and foods from Auburn University, an M.S. degree in human nutrition and biochemistry from Cornell University, and an M.D. degree from the University of Alabama School of Medicine. Her medical training was completed with a pediatric residency at The University of Virginia and a pediatric nutrition fellowship at the Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Ontario. Dr. Stallings is board certified in pediatrics and clinical nutrition.


CAROL WEST SUITOR, Sc.D., is a nutrition consultant is a nutrition consultant who recently has worked with the World Health Organization, Abt Associates, and the Year 2005 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee. Pervious consulting work includes assisting the March of Dimes’ Task Force for Nutrition and Optimal Human Development; assisting the year 2000 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee; studying school children’s diets in conjunction with Mathematica Policy Research Inc.; and serving on the Advisory Committee for the Harvard School of Public Health’s Dietary Intake Grant (ERS/USDA). Dr. Suitor served as study director for the Institute of Medicine for 8 years; studies included Nutritional Status During Pregnancy and Lactation (4 studies), Scientific Evaluation of WIC Nutrition Risk Criteria, and Dietary Reference Intakes on the B Vitamins and Choline. At Georgetown University in the National Center for Education in

Suggested Citation:"Appendix G Biographical Sketches of Committee Members." Institute of Medicine. 2006. WIC Food Packages: Time for a Change. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11280.
×

Maternal and Child Health, Dr. Suitor managed projects on maternal and child nutrition. At the Harvard School of Public Health, she worked on the development and testing of instruments for collecting dietary information from low-income women. Dr. Suitor has served on several Institute of Medicine panels including the Committee on the Scientific Basis for Dietary Risk Eligibility Criteria for WIC Programs and the Committee on Evaluation of USDA’s Methodology for Estimating Eligibility and Participation for the WIC Program. Dr. Suitor earned a B.S. degree in food and nutrition from Cornell University, an M.S. degree in nutrition from the University of California—Berkeley, and M.S. and Sc.D. degrees in maternal and child health from the School of Public Health at Harvard University.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix G Biographical Sketches of Committee Members." Institute of Medicine. 2006. WIC Food Packages: Time for a Change. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11280.
×
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Suggested Citation:"Appendix G Biographical Sketches of Committee Members." Institute of Medicine. 2006. WIC Food Packages: Time for a Change. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11280.
×
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Suggested Citation:"Appendix G Biographical Sketches of Committee Members." Institute of Medicine. 2006. WIC Food Packages: Time for a Change. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11280.
×
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Suggested Citation:"Appendix G Biographical Sketches of Committee Members." Institute of Medicine. 2006. WIC Food Packages: Time for a Change. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11280.
×
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Suggested Citation:"Appendix G Biographical Sketches of Committee Members." Institute of Medicine. 2006. WIC Food Packages: Time for a Change. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11280.
×
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Suggested Citation:"Appendix G Biographical Sketches of Committee Members." Institute of Medicine. 2006. WIC Food Packages: Time for a Change. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11280.
×
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Suggested Citation:"Appendix G Biographical Sketches of Committee Members." Institute of Medicine. 2006. WIC Food Packages: Time for a Change. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11280.
×
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The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (the WIC program) has promoted the health of low-income families for more than 30 years by providing nutrition education, supplemental food, and other valuable services. The program reaches millions of families every year, is one of the largest nutrition programs in the United States, and is an important investment in the nation’s health. The U.S. Department of Agriculture charged the Institute of Medicine with creating a committee to evaluate the WIC food packages (the list of specific foods WIC participants obtain each month). The goal of the study was to improve the quality of the diet of WIC participants while also promoting a healthy body weight that will reduce the risk of chronic diseases. The committee concluded that it is time for a change in the WIC food packages and the book provides details on the proposed new food packages, summarizes how the proposed packages differ from current packages, and discusses the rationale for the proposed packages.

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