Appendix D

Biographical Sketches of Workshop Speakers and Planning Committee Members

Steven Allender, Ph.D., is a professor of public health and the founding director of the Global Obesity Centre (GLOBE) at Deakin University. GLOBE is a World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Centre for Obesity Prevention that supports efforts to improve health in more than 30 countries worldwide and works directly with WHO to achieve these aims. Dr. Allender has an ongoing program of research on solving complex problems concerning the burden of chronic disease and obesity prevention. His recent work has focused on the burden of chronic disease, malnutrition, and climate change in developed and developing countries and the possibilities for using complex systems approaches for community-based intervention. Dr. Allender leads two partnership grants from Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council on community-based childhood obesity strategies, he is a lead investigator for the Centre of Research Excellence in Food Retail Environments for Health and the European Union Horizon 2020 CO-CREATE grant for healthier policy in Europe, and he is a named researcher for the Australian Prevention Partnership Centre. He has received lead investigator funding from several organizations, including the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia, the Australian Heart Foundation, VicHealth, the British Heart Foundation, the Western Alliance, the European Heart Foundation, and the European Union. Dr. Allender holds a Ph.D. from the University of Ballarat.

Sara N. Bleich, Ph.D., is a professor of public health policy at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in the university’s Department of Health

Policy and Management. She is also the Carol K. Pforzheimer professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and a member of the faculty at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Her research provides evidence to support policy alternatives for obesity prevention and control, particularly among populations at higher risk for obesity. A signature theme throughout her work is an interest in asking simple, meaningful questions about the complex problem of obesity, which can fill important gaps in the literature. Dr. Bleich has received multiple awards, including one for excellence in public interest communication from the Frank Conference at the University of Florida. She was also a White House fellow, serving as a senior policy advisor to the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Let’s Move initiative of First Lady Michelle Obama. Dr. Bleich holds a B.A. in psychology from Columbia University and a Ph.D. in health policy from Harvard University.

Giselle Corbie-Smith, M.Sc., M.D., is the Kenan distinguished professor in the Departments of Social Medicine and Medicine and the director of the Center for Health Equity Research at the University of North Carolina (UNC) School of Medicine. She has served as the principal investigator of several community-based participatory research projects focused on disease risk reduction among rural racial and ethnic minorities. These projects have been supported by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute; the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF); the National Center for Minority Health and Health Disparities; the National Institute of Nursing Research; The Greenwall Foundation; and the National Human Genome Research Institute. Dr. Corbie-Smith is committed to drawing communities, faculty, and health care providers into working partnerships in clinical and translational research: this engagement ultimately transforms the way that academic investigators and community members interact while boosting public trust in research. She is also deeply committed to working in North Carolina by bringing research to communities, involving community members as partners in research, and improving the health of minority populations and underserved areas. In 2013 she established and became the director of the UNC Center for Health Equity Research to bring together collaborative multidisciplinary teams of scholars, trainees, and community members to improve North Carolina communities’ health through a shared commitment to innovation, collaboration, and health equity. Dr. Corbie-Smith is currently the co–principal investigator for the Advancing Change Leadership Clinical Scholars Program of RWJF, which provides intensive learning, collaboration, networking, and leadership development to seasoned clinicians to create a community of practitioners promoting health equity across the country. She recently served as the president of the Society of General Internal Medicine. She is an elected member of the

National Academy of Medicine. Dr. Corbie-Smith holds an M.Sc. in clinical research from Emory University and an M.D. from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

Sara J. Czaja, M.S., Ph.D., is a professor of gerontology and the director of the Center on Aging and Behavioral Research in the Division of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine. She is also an emeritus professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, where she previously served as the director of the Center on Aging. Dr. Czaja is also the director of the multisite Center for Research and Education on Aging and Technology Enhancement of the National Institutes of Health and the co-director of the Center for Enhancing Neurocognitive Health, Abilities, Networks, & Community Engagement of the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research. Her research interests include aging and cognition, caregiving, aging and technology, aging and work, training, and functional assessment. She has received long-term research support from the National Institutes of Health and other agencies and has published extensively on these topics. She is a fellow of the American Psychological Association (APA), the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, and the Gerontological Society of American. She is a past president of APA’s Division 20 (adult development and aging) and has served as a member of the Board on Human Systems Integration of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine; as a member of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) Committee on the Public Health Dimensions of Cognitive Aging; and as a member of the IOM Committee on Family Caring for Older Adults. Dr. Czaja is a recipient of the M. Powell Lawton Distinguished Contribution Award for Applied Gerontology from APA; the Social Impact Award of the Association of Computing Machinery, and the Franklin V. Taylor Award from APA’s Division 21 (applied experimental and engineering psychology). She is also a recipient of the Jack A. Kraft Award for Innovation from the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, APA’s prize for interdisciplinary team research, and the Richard Kalish Innovative Book Publication Award of the Gerontological Society of America. Dr. Czaja holds an M.S. and a Ph.D. in industrial engineering from the State University of New York University at Buffalo.

Kayla de la Haye, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of preventive medicine at the University of Southern California. She works to promote health and prevent disease by applying social network analysis and systems science. Her research, funded by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Department of Defense, targets family and community social networks to promote healthy eating and prevent childhood obesity.

She also studies the role of social networks and systems in group problem solving in families, teams, and coalitions. Dr. de la Haye is the treasurer of the International Network of Social Network Analysis (INSNA) and a recipient of the INSNA Freeman award for significant contributions to the study of social structure. She holds a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Adelaide, Australia.

Ana Diez Roux, M.D., M.P.H., Ph.D., is the dean and the distinguished university professor of epidemiology in the Dornsife School of Public Health at Drexel University. Before joining Drexel, she served on the faculties of Columbia University and the University of Michigan, where she was the chair of the Department of Epidemiology and the director of the Center for Social Epidemiology and Population Health at the university’s School of Public Health. Dr. Diez Roux focuses on the social determinants of population health and the study of how neighborhoods affect health, and has been highly influential in the policy debates on population health and its determinants. Her research areas include social epidemiology and health disparities, environmental health effects, urban health, psychosocial factors in health, cardiovascular disease epidemiology, and the use of multilevel methods. Recent areas of work include social environment–gene interactions and the use of complex systems approaches in population health. Dr. Diez Roux has led large research and training programs in the United States and in collaboration with various institutions in Latin America with support from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and several foundations. She has been a member of the MacArthur Foundation’s Network on Socioeconomic Factors and Health and was the co-director of the NIH-sponsored Network on Inequality, Complexity, and Health. Dr. Diez Roux holds an M.D. from the University of Buenos Aires and an M.P.H. and a Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health.

Christina (Chris) Economos, M.S., Ph.D., holds the New Balance chair in childhood nutrition and is the chair of the Division of Nutrition Interventions, Communication, & Behavior Change at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy and Medical School at Tufts University. She leads a research team using a systems approach to study behavioral interventions, strategic communications, and promotion of physical activity to reduce childhood obesity. She has authored more than 150 scientific publications and is also the co-founder and the director of ChildObesity180, a unique organization that brings together leaders from diverse disciplines to generate urgency and find solutions to the childhood obesity epidemic. Dr. Economos is involved in national obesity and public health activities and has served on four committees of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, including the Roundtable on Obesity Solutions

and the Committee on an Evidence-Based Framework for Obesity Prevention Decision Making. She holds a B.S. from Boston University, an M.S. in applied physiology and nutrition from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in nutritional biochemistry from Tufts University.

Ihuoma Eneli, M.S., M.D., is a board-certified general pediatrician, a professor of clinical pediatrics at The Ohio State University College of Medicine, and the director of the Nationwide Children’s Hospital Center for Healthy Weight and Nutrition (CHWN). She is also an associate director for the American Academy of Pediatrics Institute for the Healthy Childhood Weight. In her role as the CHWN director, Dr. Eneli oversees a comprehensive tertiary care pediatric obesity center with activities that include advocacy, prevention, medical weight management, and adolescent bariatric surgery. She also directs the Primary Care Obesity Network, which provides obesity-related training, resources, and community integration for primary care practices in central Ohio. Her research, funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other sources, focuses particularly on intervention research for pediatric obesity, and she has authored several publications and book chapters in her field. Dr. Eneli holds an M.D. from the University of Nigeria and an M.S. in epidemiology from Michigan State University, where she completed her pediatric residency, served as chief resident, and completed an NIH-K30 institutional clinical research fellowship.

Chandra Ford, M.P.H., Ph.D., is an associate professor of community health sciences and the founding director of the Center for the Study of Racism, Social Justice & Health at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Prior to joining UCLA, she completed postdoctoral training in social medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and in epidemiology at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, where she was a W.K. Kellogg Foundation Kellogg Health Scholar. Dr. Ford’s research examines relationships between racism-related factors and disparities in the HIV care continuum and advances the conceptual and methodological tools for studying racism’s relationship to health disparities. She is a member of the Minority Affairs Committee of the American College of Epidemiology and the chair of the Faculty Advisory Committee of the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA. She previously served as a member of the Committee on Community-Based Solutions to Promote Health Equity in the United States of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and as the co-chair of the Committee on Science of the Anti-Racism Collaborative of the American Public Health Association. She also previously served as the president of the Society for the Analysis of African American Public Health Issues. Dr.

Ford holds an M.P.H. from the University of Pittsburgh and a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina.

Leah Frerichs, M.S., Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. As a public health researcher and practitioner with expertise in community-based participatory and systems science research, her research involves community-based program planning, evaluation, and research with diverse communities, including American Indian, Latino, and African American populations. She integrates engaged and participatory research approaches with systems science methods in order to address health issues in underserved communities. She uses visual diagramming and facilitated interactions with computer models to improve understanding of the complex dynamics influencing health problems of interest and to improve the implementation and dissemination of optimal combinations of interventions and policies. Dr. Frerichs holds an M.S. in community and behavioral health from The University of Iowa and a Ph.D. in health promotion and disease prevention research from the University of Nebraska Medical Center.

Sandro Galea, M.D., is the dean and the Robert A. Knox professor at the Boston University School of Public Health. He previously held academic and leadership positions at Columbia University, the University of Michigan, and The New York Academy of Medicine. He has published extensively and is a regular contributor to a range of public media on the social causes of health, mental health, and the consequences of trauma. Dr. Galea has been listed as one of the most widely cited scholars in the social sciences. He is the chair of the board of the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health and the past president of the Society for Epidemiologic Research and of the Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Science. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and he has received several lifetime achievement awards. Dr. Galea holds an M.D. from the University of Toronto, graduate degrees from Harvard University and Columbia University, and an honorary doctorate from the University of Glasgow.

Ross Hammond, Ph.D., is the Betty Bofinger Brown associate professor at Washington University in St. Louis. His research applies complex systems tools to generate new insights into the social dynamics that drive many difficult policy problems, as well as to identify potential leverage points or windows for intervention. He is a senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution, where he is the director of the Center on Social Dynamics and Policy. He also holds academic appointments at the

Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Santa Fe Institute. Dr. Hammond is an appointed member of the advisory council of the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities advisory council; a public health advisor for the National Cancer Institute; an advisory special government employee for the Center for Tobacco Products of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration; a commissioner for the Lancet Commission on Obesity; and a member of the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Dr. Hammond holds a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.

Eric Hekler, M.S., Ph.D., is the director of the Center for Wireless & Population Health Systems (CWPHS) in the Qualcomm Institute, an associate professor in the Department of Family Medicine & Public Health, and a faculty member of the Design Lab at the University of California, San Diego. He is a transdisciplinary researcher, educator, and practitioner in his work at the intersection of clinical health psychology, human-centered design, public health, and control systems engineering. There are three interdependent themes to his research: advancing methods for optimizing adaptive behavioral interventions; advancing methods and processes to help people help themselves; and research pipelines to achieve efficient, rigorous, context-relevant solutions for complex problems. A central guiding theme for Dr. Hekler’s work is to contribute to a form of applied science that facilitates equitable participation, contribution, and benefit, with technology being used when appropriate to support this broader effort. He has authored more than 120 publications that span the many disciplines to which he contributes, with a wide range of federal and foundation funding. He is recognized internationally as an expert in the area of digital health. Dr. Hekler holds an M.S. and a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Rutgers University.

Erin Hennessy, M.S., M.P.H., Ph.D., is an assistant professor at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy in the Division of Nutrition Communications and Behavior Change at Tufts University. Through her research, she works with the ChildObesity180 initiative to advance the mission and impact of scaling evidence-based obesity prevention strategies nationwide. She is committed to working with diverse communities to promote health through better nutrition and physical activity and to training the next generation of leaders and engaged citizens. She leads an active research portfolio that includes a study to test and evaluate the use of telehealth innovations in the delivery of the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and co-leads a study for the National Institutes of Health, in partnership with the New York Road Runners organization, to create and implement a

multilevel intervention to support physical literacy at school and at home. Her research has a strong foundation in developing innovative dietary assessment techniques, using qualitative, participatory methods and integrating novel approaches, such as agent-based modeling and social network analysis, to advance community obesity prevention interventions. Dr. Hennessy holds a B.S. in biology and a certificate in community health, an M.S. in nutrition communication from the Friedman School, an M.P.H. from the School of Medicine, and a Ph.D. in food policy and applied nutrition, all from Tufts University.

John Jakicic, M.S., Ph.D., is the director of the Healthy Lifestyle Institute and the chair of the Department of Health and Physical Activity at the University of Pittsburgh. Considered a leading authority on the benefits of physical activity for weight management, he has authored more than 230 peer-reviewed publications and given more than 200 invited presentations. Dr. Jakicic has been an American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) member for more than 30 years, serving on the ACSM board of trustees, multiple committees, and as associate editor for Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. He has also served on the board of directors for the Mid-Atlantic Chapter of ACSM. Dr. Jakicic holds an M.S. in exercise science from Slippery Rock University and a Ph.D. in exercise physiology from the University of Pittsburgh.

Matt Kasman, M.A., Ph.D., is the assistant research director at the Brookings Institution Center on Social Dynamics and Policy. He has extensive experience applying systems science approaches to study the impact of public health and educational policy and practice. Dr. Kasman’s recent research has focused on whole-of-community childhood obesity prevention interventions, retail tobacco control, racial disparities in exposure to HIV, access to physical activity, maternal and childhood consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages, food preference formation, college affirmative action, subsidized college tuition, school choice and student assignment algorithms, and financial literacy. Previously, he worked for software start-ups that were sold to Microsoft, Google, and Blackbaud. He is currently a fellow with the Lancet Commission on Obesity and an instructor at the Washington University Systems Science for Social Impact Summer Training Institute. Dr. Kasman holds an undergraduate degree in computer science from Boston University, an M.A. in politics and education from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in educational policy from Stanford University.

Shiriki K. Kumanyika, M.S., M.P.H., Ph.D., is an emerita professor of epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine and a research professor in the Department of Community Health &

Prevention at the Dornsife School of Public Health at Drexel University. Dr. Kumanyika has an interdisciplinary background that integrates epidemiology, nutrition, social work, and public health methods and perspectives. The main themes in her research concern prevention and control of obesity and other diet-related risk factors and chronic diseases, with a particular focus on reducing health burdens in Black communities. Dr. Kumanyika is the founding chair of the Council on Black Health (formerly the African American Collaborative Obesity Research Network), a national network hosted by Drexel, that seeks to develop and promote solutions that achieve healthy Black communities. She is a member of the National Academy of Medicine. She is a past president of the American Public Health Association and has served in numerous advisory roles related to public health research and policy in the United States and abroad. At the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, she chaired the Standing Committee on Obesity from 2009 until its retirement in 2013, and she currently chairs the Food and Nutrition Board. Dr. Kumanyika holds an M.S. in social work from Columbia University, an M.P.H. from Johns Hopkins University, and a Ph.D. in human nutrition from Cornell University.

Douglas Luke, Ph.D., is a professor and director of the Ph.D. program in public health sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. He is a leading researcher in the areas of public health policy, systems science, and tobacco control, focusing primarily on the evaluation, dissemination, and implementation of evidence-based public health policies. Dr. Luke uses systems science methods, especially social network analysis and agent-based modeling, to address important public health problems. He has published widely on network analysis and systems science methods in public health and has written books on multilevel modeling and network analysis. Under Dr. Luke’s leadership, the Center for Public Health Systems Science has used network analysis to study the diffusion of scientific innovations, to model the formation of organizational collaborations, and to study the relationship of mentoring to future scientific collaboration. In addition to his appointment at the Brown School, Dr. Luke is a member of the Institute for Public Health, the director of evaluation for the Institute of Clinical and Translational Science, and a founding member of the Washington University Network of Dissemination and Implementation Researchers. He served on an Institute of Medicine panel that produced a national report on the use of agent-based modeling for tobacco regulatory science. Dr. Luke holds a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois.

Tiffany M. Powell-Wiley, M.P.H., M.D., is an Earl Stadtman tenure-track investigator at the National Institutes of Health, with joint appointments in the Cardiovascular Branch of the Division of Intramural Research at

the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and the Intramural Research Program of the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities. She is also the chief of the Social Determinants of Obesity and Cardiovascular Risk Laboratory, which is currently focused on three main research goals for improving cardiometabolic health in high-risk communities in Washington, DC, to delineate mechanisms by which neighborhood environment influences the development of obesity, diabetes, and other markers of cardiometabolic risk; identify methods for incorporating mobile health technology to address behaviors associated with poor cardiometabolic health in resource-limited environments; and identify and characterize physiologic pathways influenced by the chronic stress that comes from living in adverse neighborhood conditions. The ultimate goal is to elucidate the pathways linked to cardiometabolic risk phenotypes and most responsive to targeted health behavior interventions. This research program is designed to leverage community-based participatory research principles, epidemiologic methods, and translational approaches to harness emerging technologies in improving the cardiometabolic health of at-risk, underserved communities most affected by health disparities. Dr. Powell-Wiley holds an M.P.H. with a concentration in epidemiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an M.D. from the Duke University School of Medicine.

Nicolaas (Nico) P. Pronk, Ph.D., is the president of the HealthPartners Institute and the chief science officer at HealthPartners, Inc. He also holds a faculty appointment as an adjunct professor of social and behavioral sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The HealthPartners Institute, one of the largest medical research and education centers in the Midwest, annually has about 450 studies under way; trains more than 500 medical residents and fellows and more than 500 students; and provides continuing medical education for 25,000 clinicians, as well as patient education and clinical quality improvement. HealthPartners, Inc., founded in 1957 as a cooperative, is an integrated, nonprofit, member-governed health system providing health care services and health plan financing and administration. It is the largest consumer-governed nonprofit health care organization in the United States. Dr. Pronk’s work is focused on connecting evidence of effectiveness with the practical application of programs and practices, policies, and systems that measurably improve population health and well-being. His work applies to workplaces, care delivery settings, and communities and involves the development of new models for improving health and well-being at the research, practice, and policy levels. His research interests include workplace health and safety, obesity, physical activity, and systems approaches to population health and well-being. Dr. Pronk currently serves as co-chair of the U.S. Secretary of Health and

Human Services’ Advisory Committee on National Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Objectives for 2030 (Healthy People 2030) and is a former member of the Community Preventive Services Task Force. He was the founding president of the International Association for Worksite Health Promotion and has served on boards and committees at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine; the American Heart Association; and the Health Enhancement Research Organization, among others. He is widely published in both the scientific and practice literatures and is an international speaker on population health and health promotion. Dr. Pronk holds a Ph.D. in exercise physiology from Texas A&M University and completed postdoctoral studies in behavioral medicine at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center at the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic.

Daniel E. Rivera, M.S., Ph.D., is a professor of chemical engineering in the School for Engineering of Matter, Transport, and Energy and the program director of the Control Systems Engineering Laboratory at Arizona State University (ASU). Prior to joining ASU, he was an associate research engineer in the Control Systems Section of Shell Development Company. He has been a visiting researcher with the Division of Automatic Control at Linköping University, Sweden; the Honeywell Technology Center; the Saints Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, Macedonia; the National Distance Learning University in Madrid, Spain; and the University of Almería in Andalucía, Spain. Dr. Rivera’s research interests include robust process control; system identification; and the application of control engineering principles to problems in process systems, supply chain management, and prevention and treatment interventions in behavioral medicine. He was chosen as the 1994–1995 outstanding undergraduate educator by the ASU student chapter of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers and was the recipient of a Teaching Excellence Award from ASU’s College of Engineering and Applied Sciences. He has also received a Mentored Quantitative Research Career Development Award from the National Institutes of Health to study control systems approaches for fighting drug abuse. Dr. Rivera holds a B.S. from the University of Rochester, an M.S. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the California Institute of Technology.

Bonnie Spring, Ph.D., is a professor of preventive medicine, psychology, psychiatry, and public health at Northwestern University and the director of its Center for Behavior and Health in the Institute for Public Health and Medicine. She is also the team science director for the Northwestern University Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute and the program co-leader for cancer prevention at the Robert Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center. She studies technology-supported interventions to promote healthy change

in multiple chronic disease risk behaviors, particularly a poor-quality diet, overeating, physical inactivity, and smoking. Her current work involves the use of wearable sensors to predict and preempt relapse to smoking, optimize treatment for obesity, and prevent loss of cardiovascular health among college students. A past president of the Society for Behavioral Medicine (SBM), she is a recipient of SBM’s awards for distinguished research mentor, research to practice translation, outstanding optimization research, and distinguished leadership, as well as the founding editor of its journal, Translational Behavioral Medicine: Practice, Policy, Research. Dr. Spring is also a recipient of the Obesity Society’s e-Health Pioneer Award and past chair of the American Heart Association’s Behavior Change Committee. She recently chaired the Psychosocial Risk and Disease Prevention standing study section of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). A past chair of the Board of Scientific Affairs of the American Psychological Association (APA), she also received an APA presidential citation for innovative research and leadership in health psychology and vision in incorporating technology into practice and training. Her NIH-supported science of team science and evidence-based practice open-access learning modules have been used by more than 50,000 learners worldwide. Dr. Spring holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University.