Pediatric Obesity
The purpose of the Pediatric Obesity Section is to support and promote scientific efforts to understand the correlates, causes, and consequences of pediatric obesity and to inform its treatment and prevention.
Goals
- Promote networking and collaboration among TOS Pediatric Obesity researchers and practitioners
- Promote pediatric obesity clinical practice
- Increase the national visibility of the pediatric obesity section as a leading resource in research, practice, and advocacy
Resources
Join us at the annual Pediatric Obesity Section meeting! Each year during the Obesity Society Annual meeting, the Pediatric Obesity Section has a section meeting. This meeting is open to section members and those interested in joining. During the session, the Bar-Or Award for Excellence in Pediatric Obesity Research is presented and followed by a lecture that highlights excellence in pediatric obesity research. The session provides an excellent opportunity to network with other pediatric obesity researchers.
Bar-Or Award for Excellence in Pediatric Obesity Research
The Bar-Or Award was founded in 2007 by the Pediatric Obesity Section of TOS to recognize significant contributions to basic and applied pediatric obesity research that have resulted in major advances in scientific understanding of etiology, prevention, and treatment of pediatric obesity.
Past recipients of the Bar-Or Award:
- 2012 – Tom Robinson, MD, MPH
- 2011 – Nancy Butte, PhD
- 2010 – Leann L. Birch, PhD
- 2009 – Michael Goran, PhD and Melinda Southern, PhD
- 2008 – William H Dietz, MD, PhD
- 2007 – Leonard Epstein, PhD
Childhood Obesity Resources
News
March 2010 Section Announcement: COMP
The Response of the Pediatric Obesity Section of The Obesity Society to the March 16, 2010 Federal Register Request for Comments on the Actions of the Child Obesity Task Force. Read the full response.
March 2010 Section Announcement
February 2010 Section Announcement
Join the Pediatric Section
All section members must be a member of The Obesity Society.
If you are not a member of The Obesity Society, join today. Be certain to select the Pediatric Section when completing your profile.
If you are already a member and would like to join the Pediatric Obesity Section please login to your member profile and select the Pediatric Obesity Section. Once you have updated your profile, you will receive all communications pertaining to the section.
Please contact Sadie Campbell, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , Governance and Executive Assistant if you have any questions.
Leaders
Denise E. Wilfley, PhD (Chair 2012-2013)
Denise Wilfley is a Professor of Psychiatry, Medicine, Pediatrics, and Psychology at Washington University in St. Louis, and also serves as Director of the Weight Management and Eating Disorders Program at Washington University School of Medicine. Over the past two decades, she has been awarded more than $25 million from the NIH in a programmatic line of research examining the causes, characterization, prevention, and treatment of obesity and eating disorders. Dr. Wilfley has worked to establish the clinical significance of binge eating disorder and advocated for its inclusion in the upcoming DSM-5. She has extensive experience in developing efficacious interventions to treat and prevent obesity and excess weight gain among children and adults. Through her research, she has established the efficacy of family-based behavioral treatment for obesity, pioneering the use of a social facilitation approach to improve sustainability of weight loss outcomes for children and their families. In addition, her work involves the investigation of strategies to tailor treatments to unique characteristics of overweight individuals. Dr. Wilfley is a TOS fellow, has been a member of TOS since 1998, a member of the Pediatric Obesity Section since 2000, and a member of the TOS council since 2011. She currently is a member of The Obesity Society Advocacy Committee and previously served on the TOS Scientific Review Committee, and editorial board of Obesity. She is also the President-elect of the Eating Disorders Research Society. Dr. Wilfley’s vision for TOS Pediatric Obesity Section includes increasing the scope and support of the Section and bringing a greater focus to increasing access to care for overweight children through the dissemination and implementation of evidence-based interventions to “real world” clinical practice.
Dana L. Rofey, PhD (Chair Elect 2012-2013)
Dana L. Rofey is currently the Director of Behavioral Health at the Weight Management and Wellness Center at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh and an Assistant Professor at the University of Pittsburgh Medical School. Dr. Rofey earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology at Bucknell University and her clinical psychology degree at the University of Cincinnati with later training in nutrition and exercise physiology. She completed her predoctoral internship at the VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System and Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh and her postdoctoral training at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh and Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic. She currently is funded by the National Institute of Health and oversees several federally-funded grants aiming to optimize services for adolescents with polycystic ovary syndrome and depression; to enhance motivation and treatment success in health promotion for high-risk children; to investigate the impact that adolescent bariatric surgery has on psychosocial outcomes; and to examine the effects of obesity on the developing brain. She is the author and co-author of numerous articles that have been published in peer-reviewed scientific journals; she also serves as a reviewer for several journals. She has served as the Co-Chair of the Academy of Eating Disorder’s Membership, Recruitment, and Retention Committee and Special Interest Group Oversight Committee; she has served as a member of The Obesity Society’s Public Affairs Committee; and she was the Treasurer for the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies Obesity and Eating Disorders Group.
Simone French, PhD (Secretary/Treasurer 2012-2013)
Dr. French is a Professor in the Division of Epidemiology & Community Health in the School of Public Health at the University of Minnesota. She has conducted NIH-funded research in the area of obesity prevention for the past 20 years, with a focus on environmental influences. Dr. French's research has evaluated community interventions to promote healthful food choices in settings such as worksites, schools, and households. Dr. French has published over 140 research articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals. She is the founding editor of the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, and is an internationally recognized expert in obesity prevention among youth and adult populations.
Alison Field, ScD (Past Chair 2011-2012)
Alison E. Field, ScD is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Children's Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School and an Associate Professor in Epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. She has been a member of TOS for 12 years and member of the Pediatric Obesity Section since its inception. In addition to her involvement in the Pediatric Section, she currently is a Member-at-Large of Council and a member of the TOS Program Planning Committee. Her research focuses on the modifiable causes of excessive weight gain, obesity, and disordered eating among children, adolescents, and adult women.
Lori A. Francis, PhD (Council 2011-2013)
Dr. Lori Francis is an Assistant Professor of Biobehavioral Health at The Pennsylvania State University. She is a developmental psychologist with expertise in early childhood influences on problematic eating behaviors and overweight. As a developmental scientist with expertise in influences on dysregulated eating behaviors and the development of overweight and obesity in childhood, the results of her work provide evidence that factors within the family environment, including parenting behaviors and family resources, represent a context for problematic eating and weight outcomes in children. Her primary research interests are in understanding factors that influence the disproportionate burden of obesity in children from low-resource and minority families.
Andrew A. Bremer, MD, PhD (Council 2012-2014)
Dr. Andrew A. Bremer received his M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from Boston University, is double-boarded in both internal medicine and pediatrics, and is subspecialty boarded in pediatric endocrinology. He did his pediatric and internal medicine residencies at the Baylor College of Medicine and his pediatric endocrinology fellowship training at the University of California, San Francisco, and is currently an Assistant Professor of Pediatric Endocrinology at Vanderbilt University. He also has a Master's of Advanced Studies Degree in Clinical Research from the University of California, Davis. His main clinical interests focus on the management of insulin resistance-related disorders, including obesity, type 2 diabetes, and polycystic ovary syndrome. His major research goal is to develop, fully characterize, and validate a novel nonhuman primate model of diet-induced metabolic syndrome which can be used to investigate the pathogenesis, prevention, and treatment of prevalent human metabolic disorders including obesity, insulin resistance, dyslipidemia, and related clinical conditions, as well as study the role of maternal obesity and the intrauterine environment on fetal metabolic programming. He also performs epidemiological and clinical research focused on sugar-sweetened beverage consumption among various ethnic groups and its relationship with insulin resistance and its associated clinical conditions.
Deborah Parra-Medina, PhD, MPH (Council 2012-2014)
Dr. Deborah Parra-Medina, PhD, MPH, is a professor at the Institute for Health Promotion Research in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics in the School of Medicine at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. The San Diego native received a bachelor's degree in social sciences from the University of California, Berkeley, a master of public health degree in health promotion from San Diego State University (SDSU) and a PhD in public health (epidemiology) in a joint doctoral program at SDSU and University of California, San Diego. She previously was an associate professor at the Arnold School of Public Health at the University of South Carolina. Dr. Parra-Medina's research centers on a community-based participatory research model that actively engages investigators in the research process as partners with communities to define problems and identify solutions. She has served as principal investigator for 13 grants totaling more than $8 million, and has published 50 scientific articles, presented at many national conferences and received awards for research, teaching and service. She also has more than two decades of research and program experience in chronic disease prevention with underserved groups, including women, Hispanics, immigrants, youth, and financially disadvantaged populations in diverse geographic and community settings (e.g., rural, urban, border, clinics, and schools).
Amanda E. Staiano, PhD, MPP (Fellow 2012-2014)
Amanda Staiano, PhD, MPP is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Pennington Biomedical Research Center in the Division of Population Science. She is funded by an NIH National Research Service Award. She is a graduate of the Georgetown University Department of Psychology and the Georgetown Public Policy Institute. Her research interests include the clinical, behavioral, and socio-demographic determinants and correlates of pediatric obesity and its ensuing cardiometabolic risks. Within TOS, Dr. Staiano has served as student member of the Membership Committee and the Public Affairs Committee, has contributed to the TOS Times conference newsletter, and has presented abstracts in both oral and poster sessions at the annual meetings.
