Committee Member Biographical Sketches
Brian L. Strom, M.D., M.P.H. (Chair), is the Executive Vice Dean for Institutional Affairs in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He also is George S. Pepper Professor of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, professor of biostatistics and epidemiology, professor of medicine, and professor of pharmacology. Dr. Strom previously served as president of the Association of Clinical Research Training and currently is principal investigator (PI) or co-PI for eight National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded clinical research training programs. Dr. Strom’s interests span many areas of clinical epidemiology, but his major research interest is the field of pharmacoepidemiology, i.e., the application of epidemiologic methods to the study of drug use and effects. He is best known as a founder of the field of pharmacoepidemiology, and a pioneer in using large automated databases for research. He is editor of the field’s major text, and is editor-in-chief for Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety, the official journal of the International Society for Pharmacoepidemiology. Dr. Strom is a former member of the Board of Regents of the American College of Physicians, and the Boards of Directors of the American Society for Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics, the American College of Epidemiology, and the Association for Patient-Oriented Research. Dr. Strom earned his M.D. from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and M.P.H. in epidemiology at the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Strom has been a member of the Institute of Medicine since 2001.
Cheryl A. M. Anderson, Ph.D., M.P.H., is associate professor in the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine at the University of California,
San Diego. Before this appointment she was an assistant professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dr. Anderson’s research centers on nutrition-related issues in chronic disease prevention in minority and underserved populations. She is the PI of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI)-funded study of the effects of dietary sodium and potassium intake on sub-clinical and clinical cardiovascular disease. She is a co-investigator on the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases–funded national, multicenter Chronic Renal Insufficiency Cohort Study, which aims to identify risk factors and mechanisms of progressive renal disease and cardiovascular events in individuals with chronic kidney disease. She also is a co-investigator on the NHLBI-funded OMNI-Carb study, a randomized feeding trial that compares the effects of type (glycemic index) and amount of carbohydrate on cardiovascular risk factors. Dr. Anderson is PI of a study testing a unique biomarker (using carbon isotopic data) of intake of sweets (funded by an Innovation Grant Award from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health). She is a member of the Food and Nutrition Board and has served on the IOM Committee on Dietary Supplement Use in the Military and the Committee on Strategies to Reduce Sodium Intake. She has an M.P.H. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Ph.D. in nutritional sciences from the University of Washington School of Public Health and Community Medicine.
Jamy Ard, M.D., is associate professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Prevention and the Department of Medicine at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. He also is co-director of the Wake Forest Baptist Health Weight Management Center, directing medical weight management programs. Dr. Ard received an M.D. and completed internal medicine residency training at Duke University Medical Center. He also received formal training in clinical research as a fellow at the Center for Health Services Research in Primary Care at the Durham VA Medical Center. Dr. Ard has more than 15 years of experience in clinical nutrition and obesity. Before joining the faculty at Wake Forest in 2012, Dr. Ard spent 9 years at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where he served as medical director of UAB’s EatRight Weight Management Services, vice-chair for clinical care in the Department of Nutrition Sciences, and associate dean for clinical affairs in the School of Health Professions. Dr. Ard’s research interests include clinical management of obesity and strategies to improve cardiometabolic risk using lifestyle modification. He has a special interest in the African American population and in developing strategies for behavior modification that are culturally appropriate for this group. He has been conducting research on lifestyle modification since 1995 and has worked
on several NIH-funded multicenter trials, including Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH), DASH-Sodium, and Weight Loss Maintenance Trial. His work has been published in numerous scientific journals and he has been a featured presenter at several conferences and workshops dealing with obesity. Currently, he also is serving as a member of the Expert Panel on the Identification, Evaluation, and Treatment of Overweight and Obesity in Adults. This group, sponsored by NHLBI, is revising the 1998 guidelines for the clinical management of overweight and obesity.
Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, Ph.D., M.D., M.A.S., is Associate Professor of Medicine and of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). She also is the Director of the UCSF Center for Vulnerable Populations at San Francisco General Hospital. A general internist at San Francisco General Hospital and faculty member in the Division of General Internal Medicine, Dr. Bibbins-Domingo is a cardiovascular epidemiologist who has published extensively on the development of heart disease in young adults and on race/ethnic and income differences in manifestations of heart disease. Her current work focuses on understanding the interaction between social, behavioral, and biological factors that place vulnerable groups at risk of cardiovascular disease early in life, and population-wide policy-level interventions that may prevent disease in these groups. She is an inducted member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation and a member of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. She received her undergraduate degree from Princeton University, an M.D. from UCSF School of Medicine, and a Ph.D. in biochemistry from UCSF.
Nancy R. Cook, Sc.D., is professor in the Department of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and the Brigham & Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, and Professor of Epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Cook is a biostatistician involved in the design, conduct, and analysis of several large randomized trials, including the Women’s Health Study, the Physicians’ Health Study, the Women’s Anti-Oxidant Cardiovascular Study, and the VITamin D and OmegA-3 TriaL (VITAL). She leads the Trials of Hypertension Prevention (TOHP) Follow-up Study, an observational follow-up of participants in Phases I and II of TOHP. This study focuses on the long-term effects of weight loss and sodium reduction interventions on subsequent cardiovascular disease, as well as on the observational effects of average sodium intake and intentional weight loss. Dr. Cook also works in the field of predictive modeling of observational data, for detecting gene–gene and gene–environment interactions, as well as for developing risk prediction scores using clinical biomarkers. She received an Sc.D. from the Harvard School of Public Health.
Mary Kay Fox, M.Ed., is Senior Fellow and Area Leader for nutrition policy research at Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. Ms. Fox has more than 25 years of research experience with expertise in dietary intake assessment and the evaluation of nutrition programs and policies to promote health and prevent disease. Ms. Fox has used data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey and other national data sets to assess sodium intakes across the life span and among low- and high-income population groups. She also has assessed the sodium content of meals offered and served in federally funded school meal programs and how these meals contribute to children’s dietary intakes and obesity risk. Ms. Fox is currently directing an evaluation of the Harlem Children’s Zone Healthy Living Initiative, an obesity prevention and treatment initiative that is being implemented in early child care programs, charter schools, and after-school programs. She also is leading the FNS WIC-Medicaid Study-II, which will assess the impact of WIC participation on birth outcomes and Medicaid costs. Ms. Fox previously served on the IOM Committee to Review Child and Adult Care Food Program Meal Requirements, as well as the Committee on Nutrition Standards for the National School Lunch and Breakfast Programs. She holds an M.Ed. in nutrition from Tufts University.
Niels Graudal, M.D., Dr.M.Sc., is an attending physician in the Department of Rheumatology at the Copenhagen University Hospital in Rigshospitalet, Denmark. Before this appointment he was a registrar and senior registrar at university departments in the Copenhagen area, including internal medicine, gastroenterology, cardiology, pulmonary medicine, allergic diseases, hepatology, hematology, nephrology, infectious diseases, and rheumatology. Dr. Graudal has conducted and published periodic meta-analyses and reviews of the data on the health effects of dietary sodium intake from clinical trials and epidemiological studies. In addition, his recent research centers on sarcoidosis and the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. He has an M.D. from the University of Aarhus in Denmark.
Jiang He, M.D., Ph.D., is Joseph S. Copes Chair and Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at Tulane University. His research interests include the study of the etiology and prevention of cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, and stroke; gene and environment interaction on hypertension and other cardiovascular disease; global health; gender and ethnic disparities in health; and translational and implementation research. He has published extensively on a variety of topics, including cardiovascular disease risk factors. Dr. He previously served on the IOM Committee on Public Health Priorities to Reduce and Control Hypertension and the IOM Committee on Secondhand Smoke Exposure and Acute Coronary Events. Dr. He earned a Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public
Health, a Dr.Med.Sc. from Peking Union Medical College, and an M.D. from Jiangxi Medical College in Jiangxi, China.
Joachim Ix, M.D., M.A.S., F.A.S.N., is Associate Professor of Medicine and a nephrologist and epidemiologist at the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine. His research applies epidemiology and biostatistics to the understanding of mechanisms by which alterations in glucose and mineral metabolism contribute to cardiovascular disease risk among persons with kidney disease. His recent work has focused on the consequences of altered concentrations of fetuin-A, a hepatic secretory protein that simultaneously inhibits vascular calcification and promotes insulin resistance. In addition, he studies cystatin-C, a novel endogenous measure of kidney function, to determine whether this measure might provide new insights into cardiovascular disease mechanisms among persons with early kidney function decline. Dr. Ix received an M.D. from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine and an M.A.S. in epidemiology and biostatistics at UCSF.
Stephen E. Kimmel, M.D., M.S.C.E., is Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine. Dr. Kimmel’s research focuses on cardiac pharmacoepidemiology, with a particular focus on the effects and proper use of drugs and devices for patients with cardiac disease. He is currently PI on a number of grants evaluating cardiac medications, including a study examining the effects of genetic polymorphisms on anticoagulation control. He also is the PI of a randomized trial designed to test economic and behavioral interventions to improve adherence with warfarin treatment and the PI of a multicenter clinical trial examining the effects of genetic-based dosing of warfarin. He has an M.D. from the New York University School of Medicine and a master of science in clinical epidemiology from the University of Pennsylvania.
Alice H. Lichtenstein, D.Sc., is Stanley N. Gershoff Professor of Nutrition Science and Policy in the Friedman School at Tufts University and Director and Senior Scientist of the Cardiovascular Nutrition Laboratory at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Jean Mayer Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging, also at Tufts University. She holds secondary appointments as an associate faculty member in the Institute for Clinical Research and Health Policy Studies at Tufts Medical Center and as Professor of Medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine. Dr. Lichtenstein’s research group focuses on assessing the interplay between diet and heart disease risk factors. Past and current work includes addressing in postmenopausal females and older males, issues related to trans fatty acids, soy protein and isoflavones, sterol/stanolesters, and novel vegetable oils differing in fatty acid profile
and glycemic index. Selected issues are investigated in animal models and cell systems with the aim of determining the mechanisms by which dietary factors alter cardiovascular disease risk. Additional work is focused on population-based studies to address the relationship of cholesterol homeo-stasis and nutrient biomarkers on cardiovascular disease risk, and on the application of systematic review methods to the field of nutrition. She served on the IOM Dietary Reference Intake macronutrient panel, the IOM Food Forum and the IOM Committee on Front-of-Package Nutrition Rating Systems and Symbols: Promoting Healthier Choices. Dr. Lichtenstein completed her undergraduate work at Cornell University, holds a master’s degree from the Pennsylvania State University, and master’s and doctoral degrees from Harvard University.
Myron Weinberger, M.D., is Emeritus Professor of Medicine and Director of the Hypertension Research Center at the Indiana University School of Medicine and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the American Society of Hypertension. Dr. Weinberger’s specialty is internal medicine and hypertension. His research interests include the relationship between salt intake and high blood pressure. In addition to serving on numerous scientific review committees, Dr. Weinberger is a member of several editorial boards, including those of Hypertension and the Journal of the American College of Nutrition. He has published more than 200 scientific articles on hypertension, many of which relate to the roles of sodium and/or potassium. Dr. Weinberger received the Robert Tigerstedt Award from the American Society of Hypertension and the Page-Bradley Lifetime Achievement Award from the Council for High Blood Pressure Research of the American Heart Association for his research in hypertension. He received an M.D. from the Indiana University School of Medicine.
