Committee Member Biographical Sketches
Harold W. Kohl III, Ph.D., M.S.P.H. (Chair), is professor of epidemiology and kinesiology in the School of Public Health, Division of Epidemiology, Human Genetics and Environmental Sciences, Michael & Susan Dell Center for Healthy Living at the University of Texas Health Science Center-Houston and in the Department of Kinesiology and Health Education at the University of Texas at Austin. He is founder and director of the University of Texas Physical Activity Epidemiology Program, where he is responsible for student training, research, and community service related to physical activity and public health. Previously, Dr. Kohl directed physical activity epidemiology and surveillance projects in the Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. His research focuses on epidemiology related to physical inactivity, physical activity and health in children and adults. Dr. Kohl also studies the effect of the built environment on physical activity and is currently researching a planned development that implements “smart growth” techniques designed to support physically active lifestyles. He was previously a member of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) Committee on Accelerating Progress in Obesity Prevention and the IOM Committee on Fitness Measures and Health Outcomes in Youth. He received an M.S.P.H. in epidemiology and bio-statistics from the University of South Carolina School of Public Health and a Ph.D. in community health studies from the University of Texas Health Science Center-Houston School of Public Health.
Darla M. Castelli, Ph.D., is associate professor of physical education pedagogy in the Department of Kinesiology and Health Education at the
University of Texas at Austin. She has been working with school-age youth in physical activity settings for more than 20 years, leading several physical activity interventions (e.g., FIT [Fitness Improves Thinking] Kids, Active + Active Healthy = Forever Fit, Fitness4Everyone). Dr. Castelli has received teaching awards in both public schools (the Maine Physical Education Teacher of the Year) and higher education (University of Illinois Teaching Excellence Award). As a fellow in the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance (AAHPERD) Research Consortium and past Young Scholar award recipient from National Association of Kinesiology and Physical Education in Higher Education (NAKPEHF and AIESEP, her study of children’s physical activity and cognitive health has been funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), American Dietetic Foundation, and U.S. Department of Education. She has presented her work at congressional briefings in Washington, DC, in support of the FIT Kids Act. Dr. Castelli is currently a member of the IOM Committee on Fitness Measures and Health Outcomes in Youth. She received a B.S. from Plymouth State University, an M.S. from Northern Illinois University, and a Ph.D. in physical education pedagogy from the University of South Carolina.
Ang Chen, Ph.D., is professor in the Department of Kinesiology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He is an experienced researcher in child and adolescent motivation for physical activity, learning on physical education, physical activity and physical skills assessment, and program evaluation. Dr. Chen’s studies examine relationships among curriculum, learner motivation, and physical activity outcomes, such as caloric expenditure in physical education. Specifically, he uses motivation theories to develop an innovative physical education curriculum that encourages behavioral change and enhances child and adolescent knowledge about physical activity. His recent research has focused on cognition-and motivation-based intervention on physical activity behavioral change in children and adolescents. Dr. Chen has been a principal investigator and coinvestigator in several federally funded, large-scale, multiyear physical education intervention studies with elementary and middle school students. He has published approximately 60 research articles and delivered more than 90 research presentations at national and international conferences. He received an M.Ed. from Shanghai Institute of Physical Education (currently Shanghai University of Sport) of China and a Ph.D. from the University of Maryland at College Park.
Amy A. Eyler, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the public health program at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at the University of Washington in St. Louis. Dr. Eyler conducts research as part of the Prevention
Research Center in St. Louis and is responsible for evaluation activities for the center’s core projects on policy and environmental changes for chronic disease. She continues to procure external research funding and teaches several courses, including one on health policy and research methods. She is the principal investigator and coordinator of the Physical Activity Policy Research Network, which integrates the work of research sites across the United States studying the nature and extent of physical activity policies in a variety of settings. She also leads a project on the evaluation of state policies influencing childhood obesity. She received a B.S. in community health, an M.S. in health promotion and disease prevention from Ohio University, and a Ph.D. in public health from Oregon State University.
Scott Going, Ph.D., is interim department head and professor in the Department of Nutritional Sciences and director of the Center for Physical Activity and Nutrition at the University of Arizona. His research interests include the development of methods for body composition assessment; changes in body composition during growth in children and with aging in older adults and related health and functional outcomes; and the effects of exercise and diet on bone, soft tissue composition, functional capacity, fitness, and health. His research is funded by NIH, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, DOE, and the Science Foundation of Arizona. He is currently investigating the effects of exercise, diet, and obesity on bone macroarchitecture and strength in girls; the effects of exercise on strength, body composition, and functional capacity in patients with osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis; and muscle loss with aging, hip geometry, and fracture risk in postmenopausal women. He also leads projects aimed at promoting physical activity and healthy diets for obesity prevention in children and weight loss in adults. Dr. Going has led the development of assessment protocols and activity interventions for multisite school and community-based studies. Dr. Going recently led the Schools Team of the Pima County Communities Putting Prevention to Work initiative, which sought to increase physical activity and improve nutrition in Arizona schools to reduce childhood obesity. Dr. Going’s work in the area of pediatric obesity and health has contributed to health-related obesity standards for children and adolescents. Dr. Going is a fellow of the National Academy of Kinesiology. He received his B.S. in physical education from the University of Maine and an M.S. and a Ph.D. in exercise physiology from the University of Illinois.
Jayne D. Greenberg, Ed.D., is district director of physical education and health literacy for Miami-Dade County Public Schools. She is responsible for overseeing staff in physical education, health education, safety education, Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC), driver education,
adapted physical education, sports programs for students with disabilities, and the learn-to-swim program. Specifically, she develops and implements curriculum, instructional materials, outside programming, grant writing, and professional development, and she designs facilities and equipment specifications for construction projects. Dr. Greenberg is a current council member of the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports & Nutrition. Previously she served as special advisor on youth fitness to the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports; president of the Florida Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, Dance and Sport; and chair of the Sport Development Committee for the United States Olympic Committee, USA Field Hockey. Dr. Greenberg was named National Physical Education Administrator of the Year in 2005 by the National Association of Sport and Physical Education. She has secured more than $20 million in federal and foundation grants for educational programs, including the Carol M. White Physical Education for Progress grant. She received a B.S. in physical education from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, an M.S. in physical education and sports psychology and an Ed.D. in curriculum and instruction (instructional leadership and physical education) from Florida International University in Miami.
Charles H. Hillman, Ph.D., received his doctoral degree from the University of Maryland at College Park in 2000 and then joined the faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he is currently a professor in the Department of Kinesiology and Community Health. He also holds appointments in the Department of Psychology, Department of Internal Medicine, Neuroscience Program, the Division of Nutritional Sciences, and Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. He directs the Neurocognitive Kinesiology Laboratory, which has the mission of determining lifestyle factors that improve cognition, maximize health and well-being, and promote the effective functioning of individuals as they progress through the human life span. Dr. Hillman has published more than 80 journal articles and 10 book chapters and has coedited a text on neuroimaging in exercise and sport sciences. His work has been funded by the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development, the National Institute on Aging, the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, and Abbott Nutrition. Dr. Hillman’s primary research emphasis is to better understand factors that relate to increased neurocognitive health and effective functioning of individuals across the life span. He has predominantly focused on preadolescent children, with the goal of understanding how both single bouts of exercise and chronic physical activity promote basic changes in brain health that may lead to better cognition and scholastic performance. From a neuroimaging perspective, he has inves-
tigated the relationship of physical activity to underlying processes involved in attention, memory, and academic performance. Generally, results from this line of research have suggested that physical activity benefits cognitive operations during tasks that require greater amounts of goal-directed action, an effect that is less pronounced for other less-complex aspects of cognition. Accordingly, his research indicates that physical activity may have a greater influence on cognitive processes that are more effortful, rather than a general benefit to overall cognitive function.
Philip R. Nader, M.D., is emeritus professor of pediatrics at the School of Medicine at the University of California, San Diego. Dr. Nader has been engaged in research in health behavior and the influence of families, schools, and communities on child health since the early 1970s. He has led and participated in several multidisciplinary research teams examining both longitudinal descriptive and randomized population-based interventions for improving physical activity and nutrition. He has been a visiting scholar at the Stanford University Institute for Communication Research, a Fogarty International Center fellow, and an investigator on Pacific Rim Indigenous Health. He continues his active community role in San Diego with the San Diego County Childhood Obesity Initiative and the National Initiative for Children’s Healthcare Quality/Health Resources and Services Administration (NICHQ/HRSA) Region 9 Healthy Weight Collaborative. He wrote a book and companion curriculum in English and Spanish for parents and providers: A Legacy of Health: You Can Prevent Childhood Obesity, Practical Ideas from Pregnancy to Adolescence (Phil Nader Publications, 2010). Dr. Nader received his M.D. from the University of Rochester.
Kenneth E. Powell, M.D., M.P.H., is retired chief of the Chronic Disease, Injury, and Environmental Epidemiology Section in the Division of Public Health at the Georgia Department of Human Resources in Atlanta. He was an epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for 25 years and the Georgia Department of Human Resources for nearly 8 years. Dr. Powell initiated the CDC’s epidemiological work in physical activity and health by leading a consolidation of the scientific literature and setting the public health research agenda. He served on the Physical Activity Guidelines Advisory Committee for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and is a member of the Physical Activity Work Group for the Task Force for the Guide to Community Preventive Services. He also participated in development of the first nationwide surveillance of physical activity and development of the physical activity–related objectives for Healthy People 2000. He is a fellow of the
American College of Physicians, American College of Epidemiology, and American College of Sports Medicine. Dr. Powell was a member of both the IOM Committee on Progress in Preventing Childhood Obesity and the Transportation Research Board/IOM Committee on Physical Activity, Health, Transportation, and Land Use. He received an A.B. from Harvard College, an M.P.H. from Harvard School of Public Health, and an M.D. from Northwestern University Medical School. He received postgraduate clinical training in internal medicine at the University of Colorado and the University of Utah.
Leah E. Robinson, Ph.D., is associate professor in the Department of Kinesiology at Auburn University. Her research focuses on three complementary areas: motor skills development, physical activity, and cardiometabolic health. Specifically, Dr. Robinson investigates the effects of various environmental and behavioral influences on motor skills competence, physical activity participation, and cardiometabolic health in pediatric populations and the implementation of school-based interventions to promote motor skills and physical activity. She is the principal investigator on an RWJF Active Living Research grant titled “School reform: The role of school and physical education policy on children’s physical activity in Alabama’s Black Belt Region,” and she has received funding from NIH and the Alabama State Department of Education. Dr. Robinson also completed two National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute fellowship training programs in behavioral sleep medicine (2011-2013) and cardiovascular health disparities (2008-2010). Because it is essential to identify ways to promote movement while motivating children and youth to be physically active, the long-term goal of her work is to create environments within schools and communities that contribute to the overall health and development of young and school-age children. Dr. Robinson is a fellow in the AAHPERD Research Consortium and the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) Leadership and Diversity Training Program. She is a Holmes Scholar and has received several honors for her scholarship, including the Ohio State University College of Education and Human Ecology New Leader Award (2011), the Mabel Lee Award (2011), the Lolas E. Halverson Motor Development and Learning Young Investigator Award (2010), and the Hally Beth Poindexter Young Scholar (2009). She received a B.S. in physical education and biology from North Carolina Central University and an M.S. and Ph.D. in sport and exercise science from the Ohio State University.
Emma Sanchez-Vaznaugh, Sc.D., M.P.H., is an assistant professor in the Department of Health Education at San Francisco State University. She received her B.S. from the University of San Francisco, an M.P.H. from San Francisco State University, and a doctorate of science in social epidemiology from Harvard University’s School of Public Health. Dr.
Sanchez-Vaznaugh served as a Kellogg Health Scholar postdoctoral fellow at the Center on Social Disparities in Health, University of California, San Francisco-Berkeley. She is a social epidemiologist whose research focuses on three interrelated strands: social inequalities in health; the extent to which environments and policies do or do not impact the population patterns of disease overall; and race/ethnicity, immigration status, and socioeconomic status. Dr. Sanchez-Vaznaugh’s research includes studies on the impact of school-based nutrition and physical education policies on population patterns of childhood obesity and fitness overall and across racial/ethnic groups and the potential role of nearby school environments in the variability of obesity and fitness levels among children attending public schools. She has received research support from the RWJF’s Salud America! research network to prevent obesity among Latino children and the Healthy Eating Research national program, as well as from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and Kaiser Permanente. Dr. Sanchez-Vaznaugh presently receives research support that focuses on multilevel influences on childhood obesity disparities from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.
Sandy Slater, Ph.D., is research assistant professor of health policy and administration at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Dr. Slater’s research interests include school and community-level studies designed to examine and reduce modifiable disease risk factors, such as physical inactivity, obesity, tobacco use, and substance abuse in minority and underserved populations. She is principal investigator on an NIH grant to study how the built environment and related policies influence adolescent physical activity and ultimately overweight and obesity. As part of the grant she is examining the importance of school and community physical activity settings and opportunities for physical activity on youth physical activity levels, overweight, and obesity. She is also coinvestigator on a national study funded by the RWJF’s Bridging the Gap program, which aims to improve understanding of how policies, practices, and other environmental factors affect youth diet and physical activity. Dr. Slater was recently named a 2012-2013 University of Illinois at Chicago Institute for Health Research and Policy research fellow for her ongoing commitment to the institute’s research quality, intellectual community, and interdisciplinary mission. Dr. Slater received an M.S. in public service management from DePaul University and a Ph.D. in public health sciences from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Nicolas Stettler, M.D., M.S.C.E., is a senior managing scientist in the Health Sciences Center for Chemical Regulation and Food Safety at Exponent, Inc., in Washington, DC. As a pediatrician and epidemiologist trained in nutrition, Dr. Stettler has more than two decades of experience in the scientific and clinical aspects of nutrition, in particular as they
relate to child health, obesity, and associated cardiovascular risk factors. A former member of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Nutrition, Dr. Stettler has experience in creating, reviewing, and commenting on the scientific aspects of professional organizations, or government policies related to child and infant nutrition. Through his medical training and teaching of clinical epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was associate professor of pediatrics and epidemiology, he has a broad understanding of various scientific and clinical aspects of human health and disease. Dr. Stettler’s technical expertise includes child nutrition; clinical epidemiology; analyses of existing surveys and medical databases; nutrition epidemiology; measurements of energy balance; obesity treatment and prevention; pediatric clinical care; tropical medicine; child growth and development; Women, Infants, and Children and school nutrition policies; food and menu labeling; and public health nutrition. His clinical experience includes caring for the complex medical and nutritional issues of children with various health conditions, including obesity, hypercholesterolemia, cancer, metabolic diseases, diabetes, acute critical conditions, or prematurity. He has served on the IOM Committee on Nutrient Relationships in Seafood: Selections to Balance Benefits and Risks. He received an M.S.C.E. in clinical epidemiology from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.D. from Lausanne Medical School in Switzerland.
Gail Woodward-Lopez, M.P.H., R.D., is associate director of the Atkins Center for Weight & Health at the University of California, Berkeley. She has more than 20 years of experience developing, implementing, and evaluating public health programs. The focus of her current work is the evaluation of school- and community-based programs to prevent childhood obesity. She has served on the evaluation team for two multisector, place-based obesity prevention initiatives and has led various statewide and multi-state projects to evaluate school wellness policy implementation and school nutrition legislation. Currently, she heads the strategy-level evaluation of Kaiser Permanente’s Healthy Eating Activity Living initiative in Northern California and focuses on school and community environmental measures for the national, Healthy Communities Study funded by NIH. She is bilingual, has worked extensively with the Latino community in California and Latin America, and has served as a consultant for several international agencies. In addition to publications of her research findings, she published a book on the determinants of obesity and several comprehensive literature reviews on the effectiveness of nutrition and physical activity interventions to improve academic performance, behavior, and health outcomes. She received an M.P.H. from the University of California, Berkeley.
