NCABR: The Science of Obesity: Prevention and Treatment


Speaker Bios

Jennifer K. Cheng, M.D., is Chair of the Department of Pediatrics at Durham Regional Hospital. She serves as Primary Care Director of the Center for Obesity and Eating Disorders and is Assistant Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at Duke University Medical Center. Dr. Cheng’s clinical interests are general pediatrics and adolescent medicine, pediatric and adolescent obesity research and community and public health. She is currently a member of the North Carolina Action for Healthy Kids Task Force, a part of the nationwide Action for Healthy Kids initiative dedicated to improving the health and educational performance of children through better nutrition and physical activity in schools. Dr. Cheng earned a Bachelor of Science in nutrition from the University of California, Berkeley, and a medical degree from Tufts University School of Medicine.

Anna Mae Diehl, M.D., is Professor in the Department of Medicine and Chief of the Division of Gastroenterology at Duke University Medical Center. In addition, she is Director of the Duke Liver Center. Dr. Diehl was professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University before joining Duke University in April 2004. She is a nationally-recognized expert in basic research and clinical treatment for chronic liver diseases. One of her primary research interests is the cause and treatment of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, frequently seen as a complication of obesity or diabetes. Dr. Diehl is the principal investigator of NASH (nonalcoholic steatohepatitis), a multi-center treatment trial for nonalcoholic fatty liver disease that will soon begin recruiting patients. In addition, she is involved in creating a national registry of patients with the disease and chairs the National Institutes of Health committee to develop an action plan on fatty liver disease. Her basic research focuses on mouse models of disease and the molecular regulation of liver injury and repair. In 2001, she received the Leon Schiff Prize for outstanding research in clinical liver disease from the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases and was awarded the Hans Popper Prize for outstanding basic liver research from the International Association for the Study of Liver Diseases in 2002. She received a Bachelor of Science in biology and a medical degree from Georgetown University.

Eric Finkelstein, Ph.D., is a Health Economist in the Division for Health Services and Social Policy Research at RTI International. Prior to joining RTI, Dr. Finkelstein was an Agency for Health Care Policy and Research fellow and a research scientist with the University of Washington's Department of Family Medicine. He currently conducts economic and health policy research at RTI and teaches the ndergraduate health economics course at Duke University. His research focuses on the economic causes and consequences of health behaviors, with a primary emphasis on behaviors related to obesity. Dr. Finkelstein has published several peer-reviewed papers in this area. One paper, "National Medical Expenditures Attributable to Overweight and Obesity," published in Health Affairs, garnered national media attention, including a front page story in USA Today and coverage in The Economist, Time magazine and the Washington Post. That paper is now routinely cited as a driving motivation to reduce obesity rates. A follow-on paper, published in Obesity Research, quantifies costs of obesity at the state level and also received substantial media attention. Dr. Finkelstein currently leads several projects concerning the causes and consequences of obesity and evaluates several obesity prevention programs for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other public and private sector agencies. Dr. Finkelstein received a B.A. in mathematics and economics from the University of Michigan, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in economics and an M.H.A. from the University of Washington, Seattle.

Karen Goraleski, MSW, is Director of Research!America’s Prevention Research Initiative. Research!American is a national, not-for-profit, membership-supported public education and advocacy organization working to make medical and health research a higher national priority. The Prevention Research Initiative, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, is a national effort designed to raise public awareness of the value and importance of prevention research. The key strategy of this effort is the building of local prevention research advocacy networks at the state level. Prior to joining Research!America, Ms. Goraleski served in leadership roles at the American Medical Association (AMA) and the American Hospital Association (AHA) in Chicago.

Penny Gordon-Larsen, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor in the Department of Nutrition at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Public Health. She is also currently a Fellow of the North American Association for the Study of Obesity. Dr. Gordon-Larsen is a specialist in human nutrition epidemiology and is interested in patterns of determinants of adolescent obesity, specifically patterns of diet, physical activity and inactivity. Her work has focused on the important role of the physical environment in shaping obesity and obesity-related behaviors. Dr. Gorson-Larsen is a member of the American Society for Nutritional Sciences and the Population Association of America. She is on the Editorial Board of the top-ranked obesity journal Obesity Research. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in anthropology and psychology from Tulane University, a master’s and a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania. She was a Dannon Institute Postdoctoral Fellow in Interdisciplinary Nutrition Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 1998 to 2000.

Glenn D. Harris, M.D., is Professor of Pediatrics and Director of Pediatric Diabetology at the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University. He has published numerous articles and book chapters on his research involving treatment of insulin resistance and about a severe complication of diabetes mellitus called diabetic ketoacidosis. Diabetic ketoacidosis is caused by the buildup of by-products of fat metabolism (ketones), which occurs when glucose is not available as a fuel source for the body. Dr. Harris has participated in numerous clinical trials investigating new therapies for treatment of type 2 diabetes in children. His current work is, in part, supported by a grant from the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration, and aims to improve understanding of the impact of variations of body mass index (BMI) on biochemical indices. Dr. Harris received his medical degree from the State University of New York at Brooklyn, where he also completed his residency training and chief residency in Pediatrics. He completed a three-year fellowship in Pediatric Critical Care at the Children’s Hospital of Buffalo, where his research interest was safe treatment of diabetic ketoacidosis in children with diabetes. After serving as co-director of the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit at University Health Systems in Greenville, N.C., from 1991 to 1995, Dr. Harris received an additional year of pediatric diabetes management training.

Whitney R. Robinson, MSPH, is a doctoral student and a Royster Fellow in Epidemiology at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Public Health. Ms. Robinson’s independent research investigates the link between obesity and prostate cancer risk with a focus on the relationship between early obesity (in men between the ages of 10 and 30) and the risk of prostate cancer later in life (in men ages 40-79). To complement this original work, Ms. Robinson is also preparing a summary and statistical analysis of the results from all papers published on this topic. For her work, she has been awarded a two-year departmental cancer training grant from the National Institutes of Health. Ms. Robinson graduated cum laude with an AB in Biochemical Sciences from Harvard University and received a masters in public health from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Public Health. She is expected to earn a Ph.D. in epidemiology in 2006 from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Public Health.

Kimberly Parker Truesdale, Ph.D., is a Research Investigator in the Department of Epidemiology at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Public Health. She has also been an Environmental Science Officer in the 342nd Medical Detachment (Entomology) with the U.S. Army Reserves since 1998. Dr. Truesdale’s current research investigates the relationship between obesity and weight change and chronic disease outcomes. Her research uses statistics from four large prospective databases: the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) Study, Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) Study, People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Aerobics Aerobic Clinics Longitudinal Study (ACLS). Dr. Truesdale earned Bachelor of Science degrees in biology and mathematics from North Carolina Central University and a master’s degree and Ph.D. in public health from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Public Health.


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