Appendix B

Biographical Sketches of Workshop Speakers and Planning Committee Members

Jamy D. Ard, M.D., is professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Prevention and the Department of Medicine at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. He is also codirector of the Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Weight Management Center, directing medical weight-management programs. After his residency, he was selected as a chief resident in internal medicine at Duke. He also 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; he participated in a focused research experience on lifestyle interventions for hypertension and obesity at the Duke Hypertension Center. Dr. Ard’s research interests include clinical management of obesity and strategies to improve cardiometabolic risk using lifestyle modification. In particular, his work has focused on developing and testing medical strategies to treat obesity in special populations, including African Americans, those with type 2 diabetes, and older adults. Dr. Ard has participated in several major National Institutes of Health (NIH)–funded multicenter trials, including Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH), DASH-sodium, PREMIER, and Weight Loss Maintenance Trial. He has been conducting research on lifestyle modification since 1995 and received research funding from a variety of federal and foundation sources, including NIH and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundatiion (RWJF). His work has been published in numerous scientific journals, and he has been a featured presenter at several national and international conferences and workshops dealing with obesity. Dr. Ard has more than 20 years of experience in clinical nutrition and obesity. Prior to joining the faculty at Wake Forest in 2012, Dr. Ard spent 9 years at the University of Alabama at Birmingham in the

Department of Nutrition Sciences. He has served on several expert panels and guideline development committees, including the National Academies (previously the Institute of Medicine) Committee on Consequences of Sodium Reduction in Populations, American Heart Association/American College of Cardiology/The Obesity Society Guideline Panel on the Identification, Evaluation, and Treatment of Overweight and Obesity in Adults, and American Psychological Association Obesity Guideline Development Panel. He is also on the editorial board for the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition and the International Journal of Obesity. Dr. Ard is a National Academy of Medicine member. He received an M.D. and completed internal medicine residency training at Duke University Medical Center.

David Arterburn, M.D., M.P.H., FACP, FTOS, FASMBS, is a general internist and a senior investigator at the Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute and an affiliate professor with the University of Washington’s Department of Medicine. The main focus of his research is on identifying safe, effective, and affordable interventions to reduce the medical and psychosocial burden of obesity. Dr. Arterburn was the founding chair of the Health Services Research Section of The Obesity Society, chair of the Adult Obesity Measurement Advisory Panel for the National Committee for Quality Assurance that developed Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set performance measures for obesity, and cochair of the 2013 NIH Symposium on Long-Term Outcomes of Bariatric Surgery. Dr. Arterburn received his M.P.H. in health services from the University of Washington School of Public Health and Community Medicine and his M.D. from the University of Kentucky College of Medicine.

S. Bryn Austin, Sc.D., M.S., is professor in social and behavioral sciences at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, and research scientist with the Division of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital. She is founding director of STRIPED, based at Harvard Chan and Boston Children’s. She was director of fellowship research training for the U.S. Maternal and Children Health Bureau–funded Leadership Education in Adolescent Health training grant at Boston Children’s from 1999 to 2020. She is a social epidemiologist and behavioral scientist with a research focus on environmental influences on disordered weight and shape control behaviors and weight stigma and on public health prevention approaches with an emphasis on policy translation research and advocacy. Her research also includes a focus on health inequities, especially those affecting socially and structurally marginalized adolescents based on sexual orientation, gender identity, and race/ethnicity. Dr. Austin has received a number of awards for her research, teaching, and mentorship, including from the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine

and AcademyHealth. She has also received numerous research grants as principal investigator and coinvestigator funded by NIH, Department of Defense, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and foundations. She is a past president of the Academy for Eating Disorders and Eating Disorders Coalition. She received her B.A. in women’s studies and African American studies from Cornell University and her M.A. and Ph.D. in health and social behavior from the Harvard School of Public Health.

Geoff Ball, Ph.D., R.D., is professor and associate chair (research) in the Department of Pediatrics and the Alberta Health Services Chair in Obesity Research in the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. He served as the founding director of the Pediatric Centre for Weight and Health (2004–2022), a multidisciplinary obesity management clinic at the Stollery Children’s Hospital. His clinical and applied health research applies diverse methods (clinical trials, qualitative research, epidemiology, and knowledge syntheses) to generate, evaluate, and apply new knowledge to optimize obesity management and prevention in children and families. In addition to his successful record in publishing and mentoring learners, Dr. Ball has received support from a range of funding agencies, including the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (continuously since 2003). Dr. Ball has led multiple successful team grants and, in partnership with Obesity Canada, chairs a national committee of parents, clinicians, and researchers to update the Canadian clinical practice guideline for managing pediatric obesity. He received a B.Sc. in dietetics from the University of British Columbia, completed a dietetic internship with Capital Health (Alberta), obtained a Ph.D. in nutrition metabolism from the University of Alberta, and completed postdoctoral training at the University of Southern California.

W. Scott Butsch, M.D., M.Sc., FTOS, has been the director of obesity medicine in the Bariatric and Metabolic Institute at the Cleveland Clinic since 2018. He was on staff at Massachusetts General Hospital and an instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School from 2008 to 2018; he was one of the first two U.S. physicians to complete a subspecialty fellowship in obesity medicine in 2008 at the hospital and school. Dr. Butsch is a leader in obesity education and has been instrumental in shaping the state of education and training in the United States and abroad. With his idea to create core obesity competencies in U.S. medical schools, Dr. Butsch has helped formalize and expand obesity education in undergraduate and graduate medical education. He has created/cocreated numerous national and international education programs for practitioners. He has authored numerous chapters and manuscripts and lectures nationally and internationally on obesity management. Dr. Butsch has served in the Obesity Medicine Education

Collaborative and Integrated Clinical and Social Systems for the Prevention and Management of Obesity Innovative Collaborative (a satellite activity of the National Academies’ Roundtable on Obesity Solutions) specifically to develop core competencies in obesity medicine. Dr. Butsch received his M.D. from the University of Buffalo in 2001. He completed fellowships in clinical nutrition (2007) and medical education (2008) at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Harvard, respectively. He is a diplomate of the American Board of Obesity Medicine and fellow of The Obesity Society.

Alberto Juan Caban-Martinez, D.O., Ph.D., M.P.H., CPH, is a board-certified physician-scientist, associate professor (tenured) of public health sciences, deputy director of the M.D.-M.P.H. program, and associate provost for regulatory affairs, assessment, and research integrity at the University of Miami. He has more than 10 years of domestic and international research expertise in environmental and occupational epidemiology. He serves as the deputy director of the Firefighter Cancer Initiative at the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center and codirector and principal investigator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency–funded Fire Fighter Cancer Cohort Study, a national epidemiologic study that includes underrepresented firefighter subgroups, such as arson investigators, trainers/instructors, wildland–urban interface firefighters, and volunteers. He is a former fellow of the National Academy of Sciences’ Gulf Research Program and served on the IOM Committee on Gulf War and Health for 2 years to provide scientific expertise on occupational exposures and work-related health conditions. His research with first responders and construction workers led him to serve on the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health National Occupational Research Agenda committee, setting the national research agenda on worker health and safety. He has scientific articles in the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, JAMA Network Open, JAMA Dermatology, CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, American Journal of Public Health, Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Preventive Medicine, and Neuropharmacology. He has more than 178 peer-reviewed publications and more than 256 scientific presentations on a wide range of occupational health and safety topics. Dr. Caban-Martinez received his D.O. from Nova Southeastern University College of Osteopathic Medicine and his Ph.D. from the University of Miami, Miller School of Medicine Department of Epidemiology.

Brian C. Castrucci, Dr.P.H., M.A., is president and chief executive officer (CEO) of the de Beaumont Foundation. He has built the foundation into a leading voice in health philanthropy and public health practice. An award-winning epidemiologist with 10 years of experience in the health departments of Philadelphia, Texas, and Georgia, Dr. Castrucci brings a

unique perspective to the philanthropic sector that allows him to shape and implement visionary and practical initiatives and partnerships and bring together research and practice to improve public health. Dr. Castrucci holds a Dr.P.H. in public health leadership from the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an M.A. in sociomedical sciences from Columbia University.

Jennie Day-Burget is senior communications officer at RWJF, where she splits her time between RWJF’s Healthy Communities, childhood obesity and structural racism, and health message research initiatives. She was vice president and managing director at Prichard, a boutique communications agency, where she led its work with RWJF and many of its grantees. She also led communications efforts for nonprofit and foundation clients, including the Northwest Health Foundation, Meyer Memorial Trust, National Association of Clean Water Agencies, and Communications Network. She led several media relations and public outreach initiatives in her role as a public information officer for the city of Portland, Oregon. Ms. Day-Burget earned a B.A. in English and a B.S. in journalism from the University of Kansas.

Ihuoma Eneli, M.D., M.S., FAAP, (Cochair) is a board-certified general pediatrician. She is section head for nutrition and professor of pediatrics at University of Denver and Children’s Hospital Colorado. She was professor of pediatrics at the Ohio State University and director of Nationwide Children’s Hospital (NCH) Center for Healthy Weight and Nutrition, Columbus, Ohio. Dr. Eneli is a leader in pediatric obesity. She developed an internationally recognized tertiary care pediatric obesity center with activities that include advocacy, prevention, medical weight management, bariatric surgery, and research. She served as codirector of the NCH Childhood Obesity and Bariatric Surgery Fellowship, the only pediatric fellowship that trains both bariatric surgeons and pediatricians. In 2021, she was awarded the prestigious National Academic Pediatric Association Healthcare Delivery Award in recognition of her work on childhood obesity. She coauthored the 2023 American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Clinical Practice Guideline on Childhood Obesity. Her research interest is on interventions for pediatric obesity, for which she has received funding from several sources, including NIH and Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute. She has served in leadership and advisory roles for several organizations, including the AAP, National Academies, and Children’s Hospital Association. She is an associate director for the AAP Institute for Healthy Childhood Weight and vice chair of the National Academies’ Roundtable on Obesity Solutions. Dr. Eneli received her M.D. from University of Nigeria. She completed her pediatric residency and M.S. in epidemiology at Michigan State University.

Kofi D. Essel, M.D., M.P.H., FAAP, is a board-certified community pediatrician at Children’s National Hospital in Washington, DC. Dr. Essel serves as assistant professor of pediatrics and director of the George Washington University (GWU) School of Medicine and Health Sciences Culinary Medicine Program, Community/Urban Health Scholarly Concentration, and Clinical Public Health Summit on Obesity. Dr. Essel has recently accepted a role and will be the inaugural food as medicine program director at Elevance Health. He sits on the National Academies’ Roundtable on Obesity Solutions’ Lived Experience Innovation Collaborative and was nationally recognized by the Alliance for a Healthier Generation for helping to create an innovative curriculum to enhance pediatric resident trainee skills on nutrition-related disease management. He is on the board of directors for the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) and physician advisor for the Partnership for a Healthier America’s “Veggies Early & Often” campaign. Dr. Essel is a member of the executive committee for the AAP Section on Obesity. He also coauthored a national toolkit for pediatric providers to address food insecurity in their clinical settings with AAP and FRAC. Dr. Essel earned a B.S. from Emory University with a focus on human biology/anthropology and his M.D. and M.P.H. in epidemiology from GWU.

Edward (Ted) Fischer, Ph.D., is the Cornelius Vanderbilt Professor of Anthropology, Management, and Health Policy at Vanderbilt University, where he also directs the Cultural Contexts of Health and Well-Being Initiative. In 2009, Dr. Fischer founded Maní+, a successful social enterprise in Guatemala that develops and produces locally sourced foods to fight malnutrition. He advises the World Health Organization on behavioral and cultural insights, and his research focuses on values, well-being, and the political economy of food. He has authored or edited a number of books, including The Good Life, and, most recently, Making Better Coffee: How Maya Farmers and Third Wave Tastemakers Create Value. He received his Ph.D. from Tulane University.

Katherine Flegal, Ph.D., M.P.H., is a consulting professor at Stanford University. She was a senior scientist at the CDC National Center for Health Statistics. She worked in the biostatistics department of the University of Michigan before joining CDC. Dr. Flegal is one of the most cited scientists in the field of obesity epidemiology. She completed her Ph.D. and M.A. at Cornell University and M.P.H. at the University of Pittsburgh.

W. Timothy Garvey, M.D., is professor of medicine in the Department of Nutrition Sciences at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He has achieved international recognition for his research in the metabolic, molecular, and genetic pathogenesis of insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, and

obesity. His studies have involved the cellular and molecular biology of cell and animal models, metabolic investigations of human subjects on metabolic research wards, and the genetic basis of diseases in Gullah-speaking African Americans, Pima Indians, and national cohorts of diabetes patients. He has brought basic technology directly to the study of human patients, and the combined approach of human physiology, genetics, and basic cell and molecular biology has provided the laboratory with a flexible capability for hypothesis testing relevant to human disease. Dr. Garvey also has performed community-based research and outreach in the context of two initiatives, Project Sugar (a genetics study among Gullah-speaking African Americans) and MUSC/HBCU Partners in Wellness (a program in community health at six historically Black colleges and universities in South Carolina intended to challenge minority students to join careers in the health professions). He has provided service as a member of national research review committees for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, American Diabetes Association, VA Merit Review Program, and NIH. He was a standing member of the NIH Metabolism Study Section (1998–2002) and chaired several ad hoc NIH study sections. He is a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation, Association of American Physicians, Endocrine Society, American Diabetes Association, and North American Association for the Study of Obesity. He obtained his M.D., cum laude, from St. Louis University in 1978 and completed residency in internal medicine at Barnes Hospital, Washington University, in 1981. He was a clinical fellow in endocrinology and metabolism at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center and University of California, San Diego School of Medicine.

J. Nadine Gracia, M.D., M.S.C.E., is president and CEO and was executive vice president and chief operating officer of Trust for America’s Health (TFAH), a nonprofit, nonpartisan public health policy, research, and advocacy organization in Washington, DC, committed to promoting optimal health for every person and community and making prevention and health equity foundational to policymaking at all levels. Dr. Gracia is a national health equity leader with extensive leadership experience in federal government, the nonprofit sector, academia, and professional associations. Before TFAH, Dr. Gracia served in the Obama Administration as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Minority Health and director of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Minority Health, where she directed departmental policies and programs to end health disparities and advance health equity and provided executive leadership on administration priorities, including the Affordable Care Act and My Brother’s Keeper. She was chief medical officer in the HHS Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health, where her portfolio included adolescent health, emergency preparedness, environmental health and climate change,

global health, and the White House Council on Women and Girls. Before that, she was a White House Fellow at HHS and worked in the Office of the First Lady on the development of the Let’s Move! initiative to solve childhood obesity. A first-generation Haitian American, Dr. Gracia is active in many civic, professional, and academic organizations. She is a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network, National Academy of Medicine Culture of Health Program Advisory Committee, Dean’s Council at the University of Maryland School of Public Health, Board of Advisors of the Center for Climate, Health, and Global Environment at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and Women of Impact. Dr. Gracia received her M.D. from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, M.S. in clinical epidemiology from University of Pennsylvania, and B.A. in French from Stanford.

Craig M. Hales, M.D., M.P.H., M.S., is a clinical reviewer with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Division of Diabetes, Lipid Disorders, and Obesity. Dr. Hales worked with NHANES (2015–2022), where he focused on obesity surveillance and epidemiology. He has coauthored peer-reviewed articles on trends in body composition changes over time and by race and ethnicity using NHANES DEXA scan data. He published a 2022 CDC report recommending the extended method for calculating BMI-for-age percentiles and Z-scores above the 95th percentile, including new versions of the BMI-for-age growth charts for children and adolescents with severe obesity. Dr. Hales is a preventive medicine physician and diplomate of the American Board of Obesity Medicine and practiced at the Johns Hopkins Healthful Eating, Activity, and Weight Program (2020–2022). He also holds M.A. degrees in public health and biostatistics from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Georgia State University, respectively. He received his M.D. from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

Faith Anne Heeren is a 4th-year doctoral student in the Department of Health Outcomes and Biomedical Informatics at the University of Florida. Mrs. Heeren is also the founder and president of OCEANS, a nonprofit advocacy group for adolescents with obesity. As a teenager, she underwent gastric bypass surgery. Through her preoperative experience, she discovered a passion for patient advocacy and a strong desire to contribute to research. Mrs. Heeren has participated in patient advocacy efforts by serving on the membership committee for the Obesity Action Coalition and sharing her story with several news organizations, including the New York Times and Associated Press. She has contributed to several research projects at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Duke University, and the University of Florida during her undergraduate and graduate years. Her

research interests include the implementation of evidence-based treatments for obesity and adolescent bariatric surgery patients and programs.

Michael D. Jensen, M.D., holds the Tomas J. Watson, Jr. Professorship in Honor of Dr. Robert L. Frye at the Mayo College of Medicine and is a consultant in the Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism. His clinical interests are primarily focused on obesity and diabetes. Dr. Jensen’s research involves the study of human body fat distribution and fatty acid/energy metabolism, focusing specifically on the effects of obesity and body fat distribution on health. NIH has funded his studies for 35 consecutive years. Dr. Jensen was cochair of the NHLBI Expert Panel on the Identification, Evaluation, and Treatment of Overweight and Obesity in Adults (2008–2013) and is the editor in chief of Obesity. He has published more than 300 original research articles and more than 80 invited papers and book chapters. Dr. Jensen received his M.D. from the University of Missouri–Kansas City and completed his internal residency medicine and subspecialty training in endocrinology and metabolism at Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota.

Nathaniel Kendall-Taylor, Ph.D., is CEO of the FrameWorks Institute, a research think tank in Washington, DC. He leads a multidisciplinary team in researching public understanding and framing of social issues and supporting nonprofit organizations to implement findings. A psychological anthropologist, Dr. Kendall-Taylor publishes widely on communications research in the popular and professional press and lectures frequently in the United States and abroad. He is a senior fellow at the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard, visiting professor at the Child Study Center at Yale School of Medicine, and fellow at the British-American Project. Dr. Kendall-Taylor received his M.A. in anthropology and Ph.D. from UCLA.

Michael G. Knight, M.D., M.S.H.P., FACP, Dipl. ABOM, is an internal medicine and obesity medicine physician, associate chief quality and population health officer, head of health care delivery transformation, and medical director of community primary care at the George Washington (GW) Medical Faculty Associates. He is also an assistant professor of medicine at the GWU School of Medicine and Health Sciences. Dr. Knight is board certified in internal medicine and obesity medicine. He practices clinically in the GW General Internal Medicine Practice and Weight Management Clinic, where he works with a multidisciplinary team to provide medical weight management through nutrition, physical activity, and pharmacotherapy. He has received numerous awards for his professional and clinical practice, including the AMA Foundation Leadership Award, Washingtonian Magazine’s Top Doctors Award, and Top 40 Under 40 Leaders in Health Award by the National Minority Quality Forum. He completed undergraduate studies at

Oakwood University and attended the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University. Dr. Knight completed residency at New York Presbyterian–Weill Cornell Medical Center and was an RWJF Clinical Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned an M.A. in health policy research.

Thomas Lee, M. Sc., M.D., is an internist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, and the chief medical officer to Press Ganey, Inc. Before joining Press Ganey in 2013, Dr. Lee was network president for Partners Healthcare System, the integrated delivery system founded by Brigham and Women’s and Massachusetts General Hospitals. Dr. Lee has performed research leading to more than 300 articles in peer-reviewed journals and three books. He became a professor at Harvard School of Public Health in 2004. He is a member of the editorial board of The New England Journal of Medicine, board of directors of Geisinger Health System and Health Leads, and Panel of Health Advisors of the Congressional Budget Office. He received his B.A. from Harvard College (1975) and M.D. from Cornell University Medical College (1979) and trained in internal medicine and then cardiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He received an M.Sc. in epidemiology from Harvard School of Public Health in 1987.

Cynthia Ogden, Ph.D., is an epidemiologist at the National Center for Health Statistics, CDC, overseeing the analysis group within National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Her research interests relate to nutrition, particularly growth and obesity. She worked on the 2000 CDC growth charts for children and the recent extended CDC body mass index (BMI) growth charts. Dr. Ogden has published extensively and given numerous presentations on U.S. obesity and dietary intake. She joined CDC as a member of the Epidemic Intelligence Service. Before that, she was in the Nutrition Division at the New York State Department of Health, where she researched obesity among schoolchildren in New York counties. She has also worked on nutrition-related projects for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and is an adjunct professor at the Milken Institute School of Public Health, GWU, where she teaches obesity epidemiology. She earned her M.A. and Ph.D. from Cornell University, where her research focused on malnutrition among young children in Kigali, Rwanda.

Robyn Pashby, Ph.D., is a clinical health psychologist who specializes in the cognitive, behavioral, and emotional aspects of health behavior change. Dr. Pashby is experienced in evidence-based interventions for eating and weight concerns, including interpersonal psychotherapy and cognitive behavioral therapy. Her clinical specialization is in the psychological treatment of

obesity, binge eating disorder, internalized weight bias, pre- and post-bariatric surgery concerns, and anti-obesity medications. Dr. Pashby is the owner and director of DC Health Psychology, a group health practice in Washington, DC, that offers telehealth therapy nationwide. She also serves on the National Board of Directors of the Obesity Action Coalition. She has presented research and clinical trainings at both national and international conferences, including the Society of Behavioral Medicine, Eating Disorders Research Society, Obesity Action Coalition Your Weight Matters Conference, International Conference on Eating Disorders, Health Disparities and Social Justice Conference, and Annual Australian Universities Community Engagement Alliance National Conference. She served as the assistant director and senior psychologist for the National Center for Weight and Wellness and a consulting psychologist at the GWU Weight Management Program. She was on the board of the Washington, DC, Psychological Association and an advisory board member for the Making Our Vitality Evident program at the Mautner Project in DC designed to support sexual minority women in health behavior changes to reduce obesity. Dr. Pashby earned her Ph.D. in both medical and clinical psychology from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, F. Edward Hebert Medical School, where she also completed her postdoctoral fellowship in its Eating Behavior Lab. Her postdoctoral training was at the Washington, DC, Veterans Hospital.

Nicolaas (Nico) P. Pronk, Ph.D., M.A., FACSM, FAWHP, (Cochair) is president of the HealthPartners Institute and chief science officer at HealthPartners, Inc. and affiliate professor of health policy and management at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. HealthPartners Institute is one of the largest medical research and education centers in the Midwest. 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. 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 the workplace, care delivery setting, and community and involves developing new models to improve 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 was cochair of the U.S. Secretary of HHS Advisory Committee on National Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Objectives for 2030 (“Healthy People 2030”). He was a member of the Community Preventive Services Task Force and Defense Health Board (formerly “Armed Forces Epidemiological Board”) and the founding and past president of the International Association for Worksite Health Promotion and serves on boards

and committees at the National Academies and the Health Enhancement Research Organization, among others. Dr. Pronk is a member of the Food and Nutrition Board and chair of the National Academies’ Roundtable on Obesity Solutions. Dr. Pronk received his Ph.D. in exercise physiology at Texas A&M University and completed his postdoctoral studies in behavioral medicine at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center at the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Tracy Richmond, M.D., M.P.H., is director of the Boston Children’s Hospital Eating Disorders Program and the STEP program, a multidisciplinary program focused on the wellness of youth with elevated BMIs, many of whom have disordered eating. Dr. Richmond is a clinician researcher trained in pediatrics and adolescent medicine and social epidemiology (through the RWJF Clinical Scholars Program) with 20 years’ experience conducting weight and eating disorder research while also providing care to a diverse population of adolescents. In addition to primary and subspecialty reproductive endocrinology care, she cares for patients struggling with issues across the weight spectrum. In her own practice, she treats patients with the full range of weight-related issues, from youth with higher weights to those with restrictive eating disorders. She serves as the research director of the National Eating Disorder Quality Improvement Collaborative, a group of 20+ academic adolescent medicine programs focused on improving care, and cochaired the International Consortium on Health Outcome Measurement’s Eating Disorder Outcomes set development. Dr. Richmond earned her M.P.H. from the University of Michigan and her M.D. from the Medical School at the University of Cincinnati and completed her residency in pediatrics at the University of Michigan.

Francesco Rubino, M.D., is a leading, internationally renowned bariatric surgeon and a pioneer in the field of metabolic weight-loss treatment and surgery, based in London. Dr. Rubino became chief of gastrointestinal metabolic surgery and director of the Diabetes Surgery Centre at Weill Cornell Medical College while also serving as an attending surgeon at New York Presbyterian Hospital in New York. His surgery training was furthered during his fellowship in laparoscopic and minimally invasive surgery at the European Institute of Telesurgery in Strasbourg, France, Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, and Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. Dr. Rubino has transformed bariatrics from weight-loss therapy to a surgical treatment for multiple metabolic conditions. He received his M.D. and completed his residency in general surgery at the Catholic University in Rome, Italy.

Donna Ryan, M.D., is professor emerita at Pennington Biomedical in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where she oversaw clinical research for 25 years. Dr.

Ryan’s research interests involve lifestyle modification and diet for weight loss and extend to studying the use of medications and devices to aid weight management. She was an investigator on NIH studies, such as the POUNDS (Preventing Overweight Using Novel Dietary Strategies) Lost study, the Look AHEAD (Action for Health in Diabetes) trial, the Diabetes Prevention Program, and DASH. Dr. Ryan also served as principal investigator for the U.S. Department of Defense for a series of awards that targeted military nutrition approaches to improve soldier readiness and performance. A particular research interest was improving primary care management of obesity and evaluating commercial approaches to weight management. Dr. Ryan was president of The Obesity Society and designated Master of Obesity Medicine by the American Board of Obesity Medicine. She serves as publications committee chair following her tenure as past president of the World Obesity Federation. She is also cochair of the Semaglutide Effects on Cardiovascular Outcomes in People with Overweight or Obesity Steering Committee and member of the Data Safety Monitoring Boards for setmelanotide and retatrutide. Dr. Ryan has more than 300 publications and is an active consultant and advisor to companies developing drugs, devices, lifestyle programs, and medical approaches to obesity management. She received her M.D. from Louisiana State University School of Medicine, New Orleans, where she completed her internship at its Charity Hospital and fellowship in medical oncology at its Department of Medicine, Hematology/Medical Oncology Section. She was mentored by George Bray, M.D., when she changed careers to engage in clinical research in obesity.

Natalie Slopen, Sc.D., is assistant professor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and an affiliated faculty member at the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard. With over a decade of experience as a social epidemiologist, Dr. Slopen is a recognized expert on topics related to the social and environmental determinants of children’s health and health disparities. Dr. Slopen leads an interdisciplinary research program focused on the early life origins of racial/ethnic and socioeconomic health disparities, with an emphasis on determinants of health that can be targeted by social policies to advance health equity. She has published her work in peer-reviewed journals on topics related to neighborhoods, housing, economic strain, and traumatic experiences, including empirical studies and systematic review articles. In 2019, Dr. Slopen served on the National Academies committee that produced Vibrant and Healthy Kids: Aligning Science, Practice, and Policy to Advance Health Equity. She earned her B.Sc. in psychology from the University of Toronto, M.A. of social sciences from the University of Chicago, and Sc.D. in social epidemiology from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Martin Wilkinson, M.A., D.Phil., is professor of politics and international relations at the University of Auckland, where he teaches and writes on political theory and public health ethics. He was a senior lecturer and then associate professor in the university’s School of Population Health (2003–2009), chair of New Zealand’s Bioethics Council and deputy chair of the National Ethics Advisory Committee (two ministerial advisory committees) (2002–2016), and member of Ministry of Health Expert Advisory Groups. He is on the Auckland Hospital Clinical Ethics committee. Dr. Wilkinson received his B.A. and Ph.D. from Oxford University.

Stacy E. Wright, M.P.H., CHES, is pursuing her Ph.D. in health outcomes and implementation science at the University of Florida. Her research areas of interest are obesity and weight stigma among Black women. She was born and raised in Jamaica. For more than 28 years, she was significantly impacted by obesity, low self-esteem, teasing, and discrimination. She wanted nothing more than to lose weight, and she tried all the fad diets but inevitably failed. After years of struggling with her weight and concern for her health and the need for more health education in Jamaica, Ms. Wright obtained her M.A. in public health with a specialization in community health and became a certified health education specialist. She is also a lifestyle advocate; that inspired her first book, The Healthy Makeover, which chronicles her 100-pound weight-loss story and the impact of obesity on self-esteem, dieting, facts about hypertension and obesity, and strategies she used to lose weight. Her long-term goal is to create interventions to support individuals and minoritized populations to effectively manage, reduce, and treat obesity. Ms. Wright has work experience in the United States, Japan, and Jamaica. Her most recent position was communications officer/research writer in the Health Promotion and Education Unit within the Ministry of Health in Jamaica.