Michael & Susan Dell Center for Advancement of Healthy Living’s Scientific Advisory Council
The purpose of the Scientific Advisory Council is to provide guidance to the Michael & Susan Dell Center for Advancement of Healthy Living’s Executive Committee and faculty on setting a research agenda in child and adolescent health. Council members offer suggestions for creating evidence-based Center projects and activities and provide overall strategic direction to the Center. The Dell Center Scientific Advisory Council consists of six leading national researchers in children’s health, nutrition, and physical activity. Council members attend an annual two-day meeting with the Dell Center Executive Committee members.
Anthony Biglan, PhD
Anthony Biglan, PhD is a Senior Scientist at Oregon Research Institute and Director of the Center on Early Adolescence. He has been doing research for the last 30 years on the prevention of adolescent problem behaviors. He has conducted numerous experimental evaluations of interventions to prevent tobacco, alcohol, and other drug use, high-risk sexual behavior, reading failure, and aggressive social behavior.
He and colleagues at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences published a book summarizing the epidemiology, cost, etiology, prevention, and treatment of youth with multiple problems (Biglan et al., 2004). He also co-authored Community-monitoring systems: Tracking and improving the well-being of America’s children and adolescents, a monograph published by the Society for Prevention Research (Mrazek, Biglan, & Hawkins, 2004), which is available electronically at http://www.preventionresearch.org. He is author of the 1995 book Changing cultural practices: A contextualist framework for intervention research, published by Context Press. Current work includes interventions affecting parenting and school practices influencing youth development and advocating for the widespread adoption of empirically supported childrearing practices.
Dr. Biglan was an expert witness in the U. S. Department of Justice lawsuit against the tobacco companies from 2001 to 2005. He is Past President of the Society for Prevention Research and was been a board member from 1998 to 2009.
John Elder, PhD, MPH
John Elder, PhD, MPH is Distinguished Professor of Public Health at San Diego State University, where he has worked since 1984. He had previously worked in community mental health in southern West Virginia and was on the Community Medicine Faculty at Brown University. Elder’s domestic work spans obesity prevention, tobacco control, diet/nutrition, and physical activity. He has worked with health behavior change research schools, recreation centers, and clinics, with particular attention to the health problems of Latinos. He directs SDSU’s Center for Behavioral and Community Health Studies (”BACH”), whose investigators have obtained $70 million in research funding since 1987. He is also Adjunct Professor of Family and Preventive Medicine at the UCSD School of Medicine, and Adjunct Professor of Medicine at the Autonomous University of Baja California, Mexico (UABC). Elder has been Principal Investigator on over 25 grants and contracts, including the Centers for Disease Control-funded San Diego Prevention Research Center, emphasizing the promotion of physical activity in the South Bay region of San Diego. He has taught, conducted research and developed programs in 30 different countries in the Americas, Africa, Southeast Asia and Europe. Elder’s 290 publications include 250 articles in peer-reviewed journals and 3 books. In 2003, he was winner of the Research Laureate award presented by the American Academy of Health Behavior.
William J. Klish, MD
William John Klish, MD is Professor of Pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire in 1963 with a double major in Chemistry and Biology and received his MD at the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1967. His internship, residency and fellowship were done at Baylor College of Medicine.
For the past 20 years, he was Chief of Nutrition, Hepatology and Gastroenterology at Baylor and Texas Children's Hospital. He stepped down from this position four years ago to devote more time to the problem of obesity and to attempt to developed an Obesity Center at Texas Children’s Hospital. He has served as a member and Chairman of the Committee of Nutrition for the American Academy of Pediatrics and as a member of the National Digestive Diseases Advisory Board for the NIH. He is a Past President of the North American Society for Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition. After becoming its first Chairman, Dr. Klish served as a member of the Sub-Board of Pediatric Gastroenterology for the American Board of Pediatrics for six years.
He has received awards for excellence in teaching from both Baylor College of Medicine and the University of Rochester and multiple awards for lifetime achievement in Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition. He serves as a consultant for many national issues related to pediatric gastroenterology and nutrition and has been on the Board of Directors of several foundations. He chaired the Texas Department of Health Obesity Task Force and was appointed by the governor of Texas to the Joint Interim Study Committee on Nutrition and Health in Public Schools. He also was a co-chair of the obesity task force for the Texas Pediatric Society and editor for an obesity treatment module for Pedialink, the American Academy of Pediatrics computer based postgraduate education system. Doctor Klish has published more than 160 scientific papers and has been featured in innumerable articles and television pieces for the lay public.
Russell Luepker, MD, MS
Russell Luepker, MD, MS has a national and international reputation in cardiovascular epidemiology. He is Professor of Epidemiology and Medicine and Mayo Professor of Public Health at the University of Minnesota, where he was Head of the Division of Epidemiology from 1991-2004, and is currently Director of Graduate Studies, Clinical Research Master's Program and Roadmap K12 Program Director. He serves as Principal Investigator of the Minnesota Heart Survey and the Coverdell Stroke Registry and has been a leader in the assessment of long-term trends in cardiovascular risk factors and their treatment as well as the diagnosis and treatment of acute coronary events and stroke. He was Chair of the NHLBI REACT and CATCH Steering committees and Principal Investigator of the Minnesota Heart Health Program. He has chaired multiple NIH groups, including the Epidemiology and Disease Control Study Section, the NHLBI Working Group on Reporting Genetic Results in Research Studies and currently the Framingham Heart Study Advisory Panel and the Honolulu Heart Program Repository Oversight Committee. His expertise has also been important to the National Cholesterol Education Program's ATP III and Population committees. He has a long-term interest in improving the surveillance of cardiovascular disease events as well as in comparing the outcomes of risk factor prevention and of therapy in the U.S. with that in other countries. Dr. Luepker brings an extensive experience of working with many research groups and the NIH and would bring a broad international perspective to the Advisory Council.
James F. Sallis, PhD
James F. Sallis, PhD is Professor of Psychology at San Diego State University and Director of Active Living Research, a program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. His primary research interests are promoting physical activity and understanding policy and environmental influences on physical activity, nutrition, and obesity. His health improvement programs have been studied and used in health care settings, schools, universities, and companies. He is the author of over 450 scientific publications, on the editorial boards of several journals, and one of the world’s most cited authors in the social sciences. His current focus is using research to inform policy and environmental changes that will increase physical activity and reduce childhood obesity. Time Magazine identified him as an “obesity warrior”.
Mary Story PhD, RD
Mary Story PhD, RD is a Professor in the Division of Epidemiology and Community Health, School of Public Health and an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Pediatrics, School of Medicine at the University of Minnesota. She is also Associate Dean for Student Affairs in the School of Public Health. She is the Director of the National Program Office for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Healthy Eating Research program on policy and environmental research to prevent childhood obesity.
Dr. Story’s PhD is in nutrition and her interests are in the area of child and adolescent nutrition, and childhood obesity prevention. She has published over 315 journal articles, 30 book chapters and 6 edited books in the areas of child and adolescent nutrition or childhood obesity.
Dr. Story has conducted several NIH funded school and community-based obesity prevention trials. She is currently PI on Bright Start a NIH funded school and family-based obesity prevention study on the Pine Ridge reservation with kindergarten and first grade children.
Dr. Story was a member of the Institute of Medicine, Committee on Food Marketing and the Diets of Children and Youth, the IOM committee on Nutrition Standards for Foods in Schools and is currently on the IOM standing Committee for Childhood Obesity prevention and the IOM committee for Actions for Local Government for Child Obesity Prevention. She has been actively involved in professional associations serving as Chair of the Food and Nutrition Section of the American Public Health Association and Chair of the Public Health Nutrition Practice group of American Dietetic Association. She has received numerous awards for her work in nutrition and child obesity prevention.
