Appendix C

Biographical Sketches of Workshop Speakers and Moderators

Jamy D. Ard, M.D., is a professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Prevention and the Department of Medicine at the Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center and the co-director of the Wake Forest Baptist Health Weight Management Center. He served as the chief resident in internal medicine at Duke University and 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’s research interests include clinical management of obesity and strategies to improve cardiometabolic risk using lifestyle modification, focusing on developing and testing medical strategies for the treatment of obesity in special populations, including African Americans, those with type 2 diabetes, and older adults. Since 1995, he has conducted research on lifestyle modification; participated in several major National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded multicenter trials; and received research funding from a variety of federal and foundation sources, including NIH and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. His work has been published in numerous scientific journals and he has been a featured presenter at national and international conferences and workshops dealing with obesity. Dr. Ard has served on several expert panels and guideline development committees and is currently serving on the editorial board for the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition and the International Journal of Obesity. He received an M.D. and completed internal medicine residency training at the Duke University Medical Center.

Sarah Buzogany, M.S., is the food resilience planner for the Baltimore Food Policy Initiative. She provides direct support to the food policy director

and works to implement the Healthy Food Priority Area Strategy, analyze policies and best practices, and manage grants. Ms. Buzogany’s major focus areas include equity in the food system, food environment mapping and analysis, food resilience and emergency response, and urban agriculture. Previously, she worked on sustainable agriculture policy at the state and national levels, managed a farmers’ market, and researched innovative farmer-to-consumer and nutrition education models. Ms. Buzogany earned an M.S. in food policy and applied nutrition from Tufts University and holds bachelor’s degrees in sustainable agriculture and Spanish from the University of Kentucky.

Sara J. Czaja, Ph.D., M.S., 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 and an emeritus professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. She is also the director of the National Institutes of Health’s Center for Research and Education on Aging and Technology Enhancement and the co-director of the Center for Enhancing Neurocognitive Health, Abilities, Networks, & Community Engagement. Dr. Czaja’s research interests include aging-related cognition, technology, and work; caregiving; training; and functional assessment. She is a fellow of the American Psychological Association (APA), the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, and the Gerontological Society of America. Dr. Czaja has served as the past president of Division 20 (Adult Development and Aging) of APA and as a member of several committees and boards of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Dr. Czaja received the 2015 M. Powell Lawton Distinguished Contribution Award for Applied Gerontology from APA, the 2013 Social Impact Award for the Association of Computing Machinery, and the Franklin V. Taylor Award from Division 21 of APA, as well as numerous other awards from national organizations. Dr. Czaja holds an M.S. and a Ph.D. in industrial engineering from the State University of New York at Buffalo.

Ana Diez Roux, M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H., is the dean and a distinguished university professor of epidemiology in the Drexel University Dornsife School of Public Health. Before joining Drexel University, 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. Dr. Diez Roux researches the social determinants of population health and how neighborhoods affect health, the results of which have been highly influential in the policy debate on population health and its determinants. Recent areas of work include social environment–gene interactions and the use of

complex systems approaches in population health. With funding from the National Institutes of Health and foundations, she has led large research and training programs in the United States and in collaboration with various institutions in Latin America, and has been the principal investigator of grants totaling more than $30 million. Dr. Diez Roux has been a member of the MacArthur Network on Socioeconomic Factors and Health, and was the co-director of the Network on Inequality, Complexity and Health. She earned an M.D. from the University of Buenos Aires, and holds a Ph.D. and an M.P.H. from the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health.

Christina Economos, Ph.D., M.S., is a professor, the New Balance Chair in Childhood Nutrition, and the chair of the Division of Nutrition Interventions, Communication, and Behavior Change at the Tufts University Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy. She leads a research team studying behavioral interventions, strategic communications, and promotion of physical activity using a systems approach to reduce childhood obesity. Dr. Economos 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. She is involved in national obesity and public health activities, and has served on four National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine committees, including the Roundtable on Obesity Solutions and the Committee on an Evidence Framework for Obesity Prevention Decision Making. Dr. Economos earned 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.

Tom Farrey is the executive director of The Aspen Institute’s Sports and Society Program, the mission of which is to convene leaders, facilitate dialogue, and inspire solutions that help sports serve the public interest. The program’s signature initiative is Project Play, which, since 2013, has mobilized hundreds of organizations to build healthy communities through sports. A pioneering journalist, Mr. Farrey worked for 21 years with ESPN. His reports helped build the reputation of the television program Outside the Lines, which won two Emmy awards, an Edward R. Murrow award, and in 2014, the Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University award, which was ESPN’s first. He is the author of the influential book Game On: The All-American Race to Make Champions of Our Children. Mr. Farrey is a graduate of the University of Florida.

Joel Gittelsohn, Ph.D., is a professor in the Center for Human Nutrition and the Global Obesity Prevention Center of the Department of International

Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He is a public health nutritionist and a medical anthropologist who focuses on developing, implementing, and evaluating community-based programs for the primary prevention of chronic disease in disadvantaged ethnic minority populations. With more than 300 publications, Dr. Gittelsohn has led multiple food source–centered intervention trials aimed at improving the food environment and providing education needed to support healthy food choices and reduce obesity and diabetes in Native communities, in Baltimore City, and in Pacific Islander communities. He developed a multi-institutional program for diabetes prevention in seven First Nations schools and food stores, which has been extended to 11 American Indian communities, and includes worksites, social media, and policy components. Dr. Gittelsohn has conducted a series of intervention trials with corner stores, carry-outs, wholesalers, churches, and recreation centers in Baltimore City. These studies have shown success in increasing healthy food purchasing and consumption, reducing obesity, and improving the stocking and sales of healthier foods. More recently, he has begun to use systems science methods in his work, simulating policies to improve the urban food environment, and to engage and work with stakeholders in both urban and rural settings. Dr. Gittelsohn earned a Ph.D. from the University of Connecticut.

Jack Homer, Ph.D., is an expert in system dynamics simulation modeling, a former faculty member at the University of Southern California, and a full-time consultant to private and public organizations since 1989. His articles on modeling applications and methodology are frequently cited, and many are published in the books Models That Matter (2012) and More Models That Matter (2017). In the health sector, Dr. Homer has completed modeling projects for federal agencies including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the Veterans Health Administration, and foundations, think tanks, and state and county health departments. He has developed models for The Rippel Foundation’s ReThink Health initiative since its inception in 2011. Dr. Homer is the recipient of several awards from the International System Dynamics Society, CDC, AcademyHealth, and the Applied Systems Thinking Institute. He holds a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he studied system dynamics and economics and wrote his dissertation on the adoption and evolution of new medical technologies.

Brent Langellier, Ph.D., M.A., is an assistant professor of health management and policy and a health disparities researcher using complex systems methods to understand the mechanisms that contribute to disparities and to identify policy levers to address disparities. He co-leads the systems

working group of the Salud Urbana en América Latina (SALURBAL) study, in which a multidisciplinary team of researchers uses group-based and agent-based modeling to examine drivers of health in Latin American cities. Dr. Langellier earned an M.A. in Latin American studies and a Ph.D. in community health sciences from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Bruce Y. Lee, M.D., M.B.A., is a professor of health policy and management at the City University of New York Graduate School of Public Health. He is also the executive director and the founder of Public Health Informatics, Computational, and Operations Research, and a professor by courtesy at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School. Previously, Dr. Lee has served as an associate professor of international health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the executive director of the Global Obesity Prevention Center, the director of operations research at the International Vaccine Access Center, an associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh, a senior manager at Quintiles Transnational, and a researcher in biotechnology equity at Montgomery Securities. He has been a principal investigator for projects supported by organizations including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; the National Institutes of Health; the Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund); The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria; and the U.S. Agency for International Development. Dr. Lee has served on numerous advisory boards and committees; has authored 3 books and more than 200 scientific publications; and has contributed to media outlets such as Forbes, Time, and The Guardian. He received a B.A. from Harvard University, an M.D. from Harvard Medical School, and an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and he completed internal medicine residency training at the University of California, San Diego.

Douglas Luke, Ph.D., is the Irving Louis Horowitz Professor in Social Policy and the director of the Center for Public Health Systems Science at Washington University in St. Louis. He focuses primarily on the evaluation, dissemination, and implementation of evidence-based public health policies. Over the past decade, Dr. Luke has used systems science methods, especially social network analysis and agent-based modeling, to address important public health problems. He published the first review papers on network analysis in public health in 2007 and on systems science methods in public health in 2012, and has authored 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, model the formation of organizational collaborations, and study the relationship of mentoring to future scientific collaboration. He

has served as a member of the Institute for Public Health, the director of evaluation for the Institute of Clinical and Translational Science, a founding member of the Washington University Network of Dissemination and Implementation Researchers, and a member of an Institute of Medicine panel on the use of agent-based modeling for tobacco regulatory science. Dr. Luke holds a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois.

Patricia (Patty) L. Mabry, Ph.D., is an interdisciplinary scientist at HealthPartners Institute, where she applies cutting-edge research methodologies (e.g., modeling and simulation, data science, network science, artificial intelligence) to a variety of topics, including issues in health care, the biomedical research workforce, tobacco control, and health disparities. She is currently the principal investigator on a project to develop a quantitative simulation model to understand the best strategies for improving colorectal cancer screening. Dr. Mabry spent more than a decade at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), where she held senior positions in the Office of Disease Prevention and the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research, and she founded the NIH systems science program. She was the founding executive director and a senior research scientist at the Indiana University Network Science Institute from 2015 to 2019, and started her career at the Medical University of South Carolina, where she conducted research on tobacco cessation. Dr. Mabry has published on tobacco cessation, tobacco policy modeling, systems science, and reproducibility, and she contributed to the 2014 Surgeon General’s Report on the health consequences of smoking. She also co-led the Envision Collaborative Obesity Modeling Network, chaired the 3rd International Meeting on Social Computing Behavioral Modeling and Prediction, and chaired the federal interagency Tobacco Policy Modeling Meeting. Dr. Mabry has received awards for teaching and federal service, including the inaugural Applied Systems Thinking Award. She holds a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Virginia and is a fellow of the Society of Behavioral Medicine.

David Mendez, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the Department of Health Management and Policy at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. His research has focused on areas of smoking control, product and service quality on demand, and policies regarding residential radon using complex systems science research and methodologies. Dr. Mendez is associated with the Decision Sciences Institute and the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences. He has served on two National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine consensus study committees and one planning committee related to tobacco research and systems science approaches to improve population health. Dr. Mendez received a B.S. in civil engineering, an M.S. in applied

statistics and operations research, and a Ph.D. in management science from Michigan State University.

Felipe Montes Jimenez, Ph.D., M.Sc., is an associate professor of the Department of Industrial Engineering at Universidad de Los Andes, the director of the Master in Analytics program, and the director of the Social and Health Complexity Center. His work is focused on applying computational and data-driven complex systems methods for exploring the social contagious nature of chronic diseases and epidemics, and he provides expertise in applying social network analysis, system dynamics, and agent-based models to characterize healthy behaviors in communities for informing interventions and policy making. Dr. Montes Jimenez also has experience as a consultant and a policy maker, and before his academic appointment, he was the director for quality assurance of higher education at the Ministry of Education of Colombia. He was recently awarded the Fogarty Global Health fellowship of the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Montes Jimenez holds an M.Sc. and a Ph.D. in industrial engineering from Universidad de Los Andes.

Dev Pathik is the chief executive officer and the founder of Sports Facilities Companies. In 2003, he founded the Sports Facilities Advisory (SFA), an industry leader in strategy, program planning, and project finance. Mr. Pathik has dedicated more than 25 years to the development of numerous businesses that empower and develop communities. His leadership has produced facilities that integrate traditional sports with special events, adventure sports, education, leadership development, and amusement to turn early concepts into financeable and sustainable facilities that make a difference in communities. Mr. Pathik’s work and expertise have been featured by The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, MarketWatch, SportsBusiness Journal, Sports Travel Magazine, CNBC, NBC, The Aspen Institute’s Sports and Society Program, the National Association of Sports Commissions, the National Recreation and Park Association, and many others. Prior to founding SFA, he founded Global Adventures, an international ecotourism company. Mr. Pathik holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Maryland.

Nicolaas (Nico) P. Pronk, Ph.D., M.A., FACSM, FAWHP, is the president of the HealthPartners Institute and the chief science officer at HealthPartners, Inc., and is an adjunct professor of social and behavioral sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and an affiliate professor of health policy and management at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. His work is focused on connecting evidence of effectiveness with the practical application of programs, practices, policies, and systems for workplaces, care delivery settings, and communities. He

develops new models to improve health and well-being at the research, practice, and policy levels, and his research interests include workplace health and safety, obesity, physical activity, and systems approaches to population health and well-being. Dr. Pronk served as the 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 he served as a member of the Community Preventive Services Task Force. He is the founder and past 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; the Health Enhancement Research Organization; and others. Dr. Pronk is a widely published author and an international speaker on population health and health promotion. He received a Ph.D. in exercise physiology at Texas A&M University and completed postdoctoral studies in behavioral medicine at the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

Daniel E. Rivera, Ph.D., is a professor of chemical engineering and the program director of the Control Systems Engineering Laboratory at Arizona State University (ASU). In 1990, he joined the faculty in the Department of Chemical, Biological and Materials Engineering at ASU. Prior to joining ASU, Dr. Rivera was an associate research engineer in the control systems section of Shell Development Company. He has also been a visiting researcher with the Division of Automatic Control at Linköping University, Sweden; 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 the topics of 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 a recipient of the 1997–1998 Teaching Excellence Award from the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences at ASU. In 2007, Dr. Rivera was awarded a K25 Mentored Quantitative Research Career Development Award from the National Institutes of Health to study control systems approaches for fighting drug abuse. He was designated as a distinguished member by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Control Systems Society in 2019. Dr. Pronk received a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the California Institute of Technology in 1987 and holds an M.S. and a B.S. from the University of Rochester and the University of Wisconsin–Madison, respectively.

Stella Yi, Ph.D., M.P.H., is an assistant professor in the Department of Population Health at the New York University Grossman School of Medicine. She is a cardiovascular epidemiologist, and her research is grounded in the application of rigorous methods—including mixed methods, community-partnered systems science, and implementation science—to address issues and inform policy making and program implementation in real-world and community settings to improve health equity. Dr. Yi’s specific areas of expertise are policy and community-partnered programs for urban immigrant populations, including Asian Americans; nutrition and lifestyle behaviors; and cardiometabolic disease. She holds a Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and an M.P.H. from the Yale School of Public Health.

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