Appendix G

Committee Member Biographies

Robert E. Black, M.D., M.P.H. (Chair), is Professor and Director of the Institute for International Programs of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland. Dr. Black is trained in medicine, infectious diseases, and epidemiology. He served as a medical epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and worked at institutions in Bangladesh and Peru on research related to childhood infectious diseases and nutritional problems. He was Chair of the Department of International Health of the Bloomberg School of Public Health from 1985 to 2013.

Dr. Black’s current research includes field trials of vaccines, micronutrients, and other interventions; effectiveness studies of health programs; and evaluation of preventive and curative health service programs in low- and middle-income countries. In the past 20 years he led work that demonstrated the benefits of zinc supplements in prevention and treatment of childhood diarrhea and pneumonia. His other interests are related to the use of evidence in policy and programs, including estimates of the causes of child mortality, the development of research capacity, and the strengthening of public health training.

As a member of the U.S. National Academy of Medicine and advisory bodies of the World Health Organization, the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh, and other international organizations, he assists with the development of research and policies intended to improve child health. He chaired the Child Health and Nutrition Research Initiative and serves on the governing boards of Nutrition International and Vitamin Angels. He has more than 700 scientific journal publications

and is co-editor of the textbook Global Health. Dr. Black is the recipient of the Programme for Global Paediatric Research Award for Outstanding Contributions to Global Child Health in 2010, the Prince Mahidol Award for Public Health in 2010, the Canada Gairdner Global Health Award in 2011, the Nutrition Leadership Award from Sight and Life in 2013, and the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Humanitarian Award in 2016.

Lindsay Allen, Ph.D., has been the Center Director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Services Western Human Nutrition Research Center since 2004. She was formerly a Professor in the Department of Nutrition at the University of California, Davis, where she is now an adjunct Research Professor. Dr. Allen’s research focuses on the prevalence, causes, and consequences of micronutrient deficiencies, primarily in developing countries. She has evaluated interventions with micronutrient supplements, food fortification, and food-based approaches to improve nutritional status, pregnancy outcome, and child development, resulting in more than 200 publications from many countries. One of her most important achievements has been to document the widespread high prevalence of vitamin B12 deficiency. Her research investigates the adverse functional consequences of this deficiency on infants, children, and women in developing countries and elderly in the United States, and the effects of different interventions to alleviate this deficiency. These interventions have included supplements for lactating women, infants, and children; animal source foods (meat and milk); and intramuscular injection of high doses.

She is part of a team testing the use of 14C-vitamin B12, measured by accelerator mass spectrometry, for measuring vitamin B12 absorption and bioavailability in various conditions. Her laboratory is currently collaborating in the development and evaluation of a new combined indicator of vitamin B12 status, cB12. Dr. Allen’s laboratory has recently developed efficient mass spectrometry and high performance liquid chromatography methods for the measurement of multiple vitamins simultaneously in human milk. Application of these methods is revealing poor breast milk micronutrient content in some populations consuming poor-quality diets, and enabling assessment of the impact of maternal supplementation on breast milk quality. Dr. Allen has served on 10 committees of the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, including the Standing Committee on the Scientific Evaluation of Dietary Reference Intakes. She has advised many national, bilateral, and international organizations including the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Children’s Fund, the Asian Development Bank, the World Bank, the Pan American Health Organization, and the Food and Agriculture Organization. She is the principal author of the book What Works?: A Review of the Efficacy and Effectiveness of Nutrition Interven

tions, and of WHO’s Guidelines on Food Fortification with Micronutrients. She served as President of the American Society of Nutritional Sciences and the Society for International Nutrition Research, and Vice President of the International Union of Nutritional Sciences. From the American Society for Nutrition she received the Kellogg Prize for International Nutrition, the Conrad A. Elvehjem Award for Public Service in Nutrition, and the McCollum International Lectureship. Dr. Allen is currently a member of the steering committee of the Micronutrient Forum and the International Nutrition Foundation, and Chair of the National Institutes of Health’s Biomarkers in Nutrition and Development Expert Panel on Vitamin B12.

Zulfiqar A. Bhutta, M.B.B.S., Ph.D., is the Robert Harding Inaugural Chair in Global Child Health at the Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto; Co-Director of the SickKids Centre for Global Child Health; and the Founding Director of the Centre of Excellence in Women and Child Health at the Aga Khan University, unique joint appointments. He also holds adjunct professorships at several leading universities globally, including the Schools of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore), Tufts University (Boston), Boston University, University of Alberta, and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. He is a designated Distinguished National Professor of the Government of Pakistan and was the Founding Chair of the National Research Ethics Committee of the Government of Pakistan from 2003 to 2014. Dr. Bhutta was a member of the Independent Expert Review Group appointed by the United Nations Secretary-General for monitoring global progress in maternal and child health Millennium Development Goals (2011–2015). He represented the global academic and research organizations on the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations Board and serves on its Evaluation Advisory Committee. Dr. Bhutta is the Co-Chair of the Global Countdown for 2015 and 2030 Initiatives from 2006 to 2017, the Co-Chair of the Maternal and Child Health Oversight Committee of World Health Organization (WHO) Eastern Mediterranean Region (EMRO), and the Chairman of the Coalition of Centres in Global Child Health with its secretariat based at the Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto. He is a technical member of the recently appointed high-level United Nations Health and Human Rights Committee, an executive committee member of Partnership for Maternal, Newborn & Child Health (PMNCH) and a member of the Independent Expert Group producing the Global Nutrition Reports since 2014.

Professor Bhutta was educated at the University of Peshawar (M.B.B.S.) and obtained his Ph.D. from the Karolinska Institute, Sweden. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (Edinburgh & London), the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (London), American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Pakistan Academy of Sciences. He heads a large re-

search team in Pakistan working on issues of maternal, newborn, and child survival and nutrition globally and regionally. Dr. Bhutta has served as a member of the Global Advisory Committee for Health Research for WHO, the Board of Child & Health and Nutrition Initiative of Global Forum for Health Research, and the steering committees of the International Zinc and Vitamin A Nutrition Consultative Groups. He was a founding board member of the PMNCH and a board member of the International Center for Diarrheal Diseases Research (2011–2017). Dr. Bhutta was a member of the WHO Strategic Advisory Committee for Vaccines from 2010 to 2015 and the Advisory Committee for Health Research of the WHO EMRO. He is the past President of the Commonwealth Association of Paediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition and the Federation of Asia-Oceania Perinatal Societies. As the current President of the International Pediatric Association, he is a leading voice for health professionals supporting integrated maternal, newborn, and child health globally.

Susan Fairweather-Tait, Ph.D., D.Sc., is Professor of Human Nutrition in the Norwich Medical School at the University of East Anglia (UEA), United Kingdom. She has a B.Sc. (Food Sciences), an M.Sc. (Nutrition), a Ph.D. from King’s College London (formerly Queen Elizabeth College), and a D.Sc. from the University of London. After her Ph.D. she worked for the food industry and then moved to the Institute of Food Research, Norwich, to undertake research on mineral bioavailbility, initially as a Senior Research Scientist and later as Head of the Nutrition Division, and Programme Leader for Micronutrients. In 2007, she was offered a personal chair at UEA. Professional activities include membership of the Editorial Board of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (2006–2012), Academy of Finland Expert Group (2010–2012), International Reference Group for Nordic Nutrition Recommendations 5 (2010–2012), and Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council Agri-Food Committee (2006–2009). In 2009 she was appointed as an expert for the European Food Safety Authority Panel on Dietetic Products, Nutrition and Allergies Panel and the Working Groups on Dietary Reference Values and Health Claims. In 2017 she was elected as a member of the American Society for Nutrition Class of Fellows. Her research interests are mineral requirements for optimal health and the prevention of chronic disease, and she has more than 220 peer-reviewed publications.

Wafaie Fawzi, M.B.B.S., Dr.P.H., is Professor of Nutrition, Epidemiology and Global Health and Chair of the Department of Global Health and Population at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He completed his medical training at the University of Khartoum, Sudan, and his Doctorate of Public Health in 1992 in the Departments of Epidemiology

and Nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He has experience in the design and implementation of randomized controlled trials and observational epidemiologic studies of perinatal health and infectious diseases, with emphasis on nutritional factors. These include examining the epidemiology of adverse pregnancy outcomes, childhood infections, and HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria among populations in Ethiopia, India, Tanzania, Uganda, and other developing countries. Dr. Fawzi has been a Principal Investigator of the Management and Development for Health HIV/AIDS Care and Treatment Program in Tanzania, which provides for scaling up quality care and treatment services and building operational research capacity. He is a founding member of the Africa Academy of Public Health, a Harvard-affiliated organization that aims to train future public health leaders and build strong research collaborations with partners in Africa.

Mary L’Abbé, Ph.D., M.Sc., is the Earle W. McHenry Professor and Chair of the Department of Nutritional Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, at the University of Toronto, where she leads a research group on Food and Nutrition Policy for Population Health. Dr. L’Abbé is an expert in public health nutrition, nutrition policy, and food and nutrition regulations, with a long career in mineral nutrition research. Her research examines the nutritional quality of the Canadian food supply, food intake patterns, and consumer research on food choices related to obesity and chronic disease. Dr. L’Abbé is a member of several committees of the World Health Organization (WHO), including the Nutrition Guidance Expert Advisory Group on Diet and Health and the Global Coordinating Mechanism for Noncommunicable Diseases; the former having recently released the WHO Guidelines on Sugars. Dr. L’Abbé was Co-Chair of the Canadian Trans Fat Task Force, led the Trans Fat Monitoring Program, and served as Chair and Vice Chair of the Canadian Sodium Working Group. Before joining the University of Toronto, Dr. L’Abbé was Director, Bureau of Nutritional Sciences, at Health Canada. Dr. L’Abbé holds a Ph.D. in nutrition from McGill University and has authored more than 180 peer-reviewed scientific publications, book chapters, and government reports.

Laura Martino, Ph.D., has been a senior statistician since January 2014 and Team Leader of the Systematic Review and Experimental Design Team of the Assistance and Methodological Support Unit at the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) in Parma (Italy). Before joining EFSA in 2011 she was a detached national expert at the European Statistical Institute (Eurostat) in Luxembourg in the Unit Agricultural Statistics Farms, AgriEnvironment and Rural Development land use/cover area frame survey team. Previously Dr. Martino served as a researcher in methodological

statistics at the National Statistical Institute in Rome (Italy) leading the Unit Crop, Forestry and Hunting Statistic in the Department for Statistical Production.

She has extensive experience in the design of observational and experimental studies as well as in the methodology for food and feed risk assessment. Dr. Martino’s research focuses on modeling association between dietary intake and health outcomes with a specific center on establishing dietary reference values, methods for equivalence testing, and uncertainty analysis. Her methodological expertise has led to contributions to several methodological guidance documents. She gave lectures on statistical methods in various master training programmes including the BIOSAFE summer school jointly organized by Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Università degli Studi di Milano, and EFSA.

Dr. Martino holds a Ph.D. in methodological statistics for scientific research, having completed postgraduate training at the University of Bologna and 6-month scholarship at the Texas A&M University at College Station (United States). She is a member of the Italian Statistical Society, the International Biometric Society, and the Statistical Modeling Society.

Hildegard Przyrembel, M.D., Ph.D., is retired Director and Professor at the Federal Institute for Risk Assessment in Berlin, Germany (since 2007). She started her career at the University Children’s Hospital Ulm working on a project from the German Society for Research on the amino acid requirement of premature infants, combining analytical laboratory work with a clinical education in paediatrics, with special emphasis on inborn errors of metabolism. Thereafter she worked at the University Children’s Hospital Düsseldorf and the University Children’s Hospital Rotterdam and the Department of Cell Biology and Clinical Genetics of the Erasmus-University, Rotterdam, as head of the Unit for Metabolic Disorders and of the Metabolic Laboratory. In cooperation the with the Department of Biochemistry in Rotterdam, the metabolic laboratories of the Hammersmith Hospital, London, the University Children’s Hospital in Utrecht, and the John F. Kennedy Institute for Basic Research in Mental Retardation in Denver, Colorado, she detected two new inborn errors of lysine metabolism and shifted the emphasis of her work to defects in fatty acid oxidation and of the mitochondrial respiratory chain and their accessability to therapeutic measures. In 1990, Dr. Przyrembel accepted a position in the Unit Nutrition in Medicine at the Federal Institute of Health at Berlin and became lecturer in pediatrics at the Humboldt University Berlin.

She worked as a consultant in infant and child nutrition and dietetic therapy, both on national and international panels. Since the foundation of the Federal Institute for Risk Assessment in November 2002, Dr. Przyrembel’s tasks have been predominanty on the assessment of both

benefits and risks in connection with dietary habits, including breastfeeding, and connected with the use of ingredients, nutrients, whole foods, and with residues (if the latter occur in human milk or foods for infants and children). In 2000, Dr. Przyrembel started as an expert in the working groups on Upper Levels of Vitamins and Minerals, on Infant Formula Composition, and on Food Additives (Nutrient Compounds) of the Scientific Committee on Food of the European Commission. In 2003 Dr. Przyrembel was appointed a member of the Scientific Panel on Nutrition, Dietetic Foods and Allergy of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) until 2012. She is an expert in several working groups of EFSA and has contributed to more than 400 EFSA Opinions.

Emorn Udomkesmalee, Ph.D., is Senior Advisor and Former Director of the Institute of Nutrition of the Mahidol University in Thailand. Currently, she is Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of International Health at Johns Hopkins University in the United States. She received her Ph.D. in nutritional biochemistry and metabolism from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1985. Her postdoctoral training was at the Vitamin and Mineral Nutrition Laboratory in the U.S. Department of Agriculture. She is currently a member of several international committees related to nutrition advocacy, food policy, micronutrients, and implementation science. Her research interests include micronutrient assessment, bioavailability, and metabolism; efficacy of food-based interventions to address micronutrient deficiencies; maternal and child nutrition policy; and program implementation.

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