faculty
Planning Committee
Karen Glanz, PhD, MPH
University of Pennsylvania, School of Medicine and School of Nursing
Jim Sallis, PhD
University of California - San Diego
Brian Saelens, PhD
University of Washington
Amy Hillier, PhD
University of Pennsylvania, PennDesign Department of City and Regional Planning
Angie Cradock, ScD, MPE
Harvard University, Harvard Prevention Research Center
Faculty Instructors
Course(s) taught are listed below each name.
Mariela Alfonzo, PhD
Environmental Audits
Alexis Dinno,
ScD, MPH, MEM
Data Analysis
Christina Economos, PhD
Policy Change
Joel Gittelsohn, PhD
Measuring the Food Environment in Minority Communities
Karen Glanz, PhD, MPH
Nutrition Environments Overview, NEMS, Self-Report Measures of Physical Activity and Nutrition Environments
Kathryn Henderson, PhD
School Nutrition Environments
Amy Hillier, PhD
GIS: Geographic Information Systems
Thom McKenzie, PhD
Observation of Parks and Playgrounds
Lisa Powell, PhD
Databases and Economic Analysis
Daniel Rodriguez, PhD
Built Environment and Transportation
Jim Sallis, PhD
Built Environment and Physical Activity Overview, Self-Report Measures of Physical Activity and Nutrition Environments
Brian Saelens, PhD
EAPRS: Environmental Assessment of Public Recreation Spaces
Dianne Stanton Ward, EdD
Home Nutrition Environments
Planning Committee Profiles
Karen Glanz, PhD, MPH
George A. Weiss University Professor
School of Medicine and School of Nursing
University of Pennsylvania
Karen Glanz is the George A. Weiss University Professor in the School of Medicine and School of Nursing and Director of a new Center for Health Behavior Research at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Glanz's current research emphasizes understanding and preventing health risk behaviors related to nutrition and obesity, skin cancer prevention, cancer screening, and tobacco control. She has been continuously funded for the past 15 years with more than $25 million in grants as Principal Investigator. Karen Glanz's scholarly contributions consist of more than 260 journal articles and book chapters. She is senior editor of Health Behavior and Health Education: Theory, Research, and Practice (Jossey-Bass Inc.), a widely used text now in its third edition. Dr. Glanz is the 2007 recipient of the Elizabeth Fries Health Education Award from the James and Sarah Fries Foundation. Dr. Glanz was formerly a Professor of Behavioral Sciences and Health Education and Epidemiology, Georgia Cancer Coalition Distinguished Research Scholar, and Director of the Emory Prevention Research Center at the Rollins School of Public Health (RSPH) at Emory University, where is currently adjunct faculty. She is a member of the federally appointed Task Force on Community Preventive Services and was recognized in 2006 as a Highly Cited Author by ISIHighlyCited.com, in the top 0.5% of authors in her field over a 20-year period.
Jim Sallis, PhD
Professor,
Family and Preventive Medicine and Division of Behavioral Medicine
University of California, San Diego
Jim Sallis is the Distinguished Professor of Family and Preventive Medicine, Chair of the Division of Behavioral Medicine, 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 and nutrition. He is the author of over 375 scientific publications, on the editorial boards of several journals, and was identified as one of the world's most cited authors in the social sciences. He served on the editorial committee for the 1996 U.S. Surgeon General's Report, Physical Activity and Health. Dr. Sallis is co-author (with Neville Owen) of Physical Activity and Behavioral Medicine (Sage, 1999). In 2004, Time Magazine identified him as an"obesity warrior".
Brian Saelens, PhD
Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center
University of Washington
Brian Saelens is a health psychologist and Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Seattle's Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center and the University of Washington. Dr. Saelens conducts research in environmental influences on physical activity and eating and on the psychosocial factors that influence individual choice for weight-related behaviors. He is also interested in evaluating and improving behavioral treatment for pediatric overweight. His work has been supported by grant funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, USDA, and the National Institutes of Health.
Amy Hillier, PhD, MSW
Assistant Professor, PennDesign Department of City and Regional Planning
University of Pennsylvania
Through a stroke of good luck, Amy Hillier learned GIS and spatial statistical analysis skills while earning her MSW and PhD in social welfare at the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Work. She currently teaches introductory GIS courses at Penn in the city planning, urban studies, social work, and public health programs and serves as a formal and informal GIS consultant to numerous Philadelphia-based nonprofits. Her research focuses on the spatial analysis of public health disparities, including access to healthful foods, physical activity, and exposure to outdoor advertising. She has also used historical GIS methods to research mortgage redlining (http://cml.upenn.edu) and W.E.B. Du Bois’ classic book, The Philadelphia Negro (www.mappingdubois.org).
Angie Cradock, ScD, MPE
Senior Research Scientist and Deputy Director, Harvard Prevention Research Center
Harvard University
Angie Cradock is a Senior Research Scientist and Deputy Director of the Harvard Prevention Research Center (HPRC) in the Department of Society, Human Development, and Health at the Harvard School of Public Health. The HPRC works with communities, community agencies and other state and local partners to develop, implement, and evaluate methodologies and interventions to improve nutrition and physical activity and reduce overweight and chronic disease risk among children, youth, and their families.
Dr. Cradock’s research primarily focuses on the social, policy and environmental factors associated with physical activity and nutrition behaviors among youth. Specific areas of interest include school and neighborhood environments, community-based intervention research, and policy research. She holds a Doctor of Science degree from the Harvard School of Public Health.
Faculty Instructor Profiles
Kristen Day, PhD
Professor and Department Head, Humanities and Social Sciences
Polytechnic Institute of New York University
Dr. Day's work examines the complex relationships between diverse groups and urban environments, focusing on issues such as health, crime, and safety. Day has authored numerous articles and chapters on these subjects in leading journals in architecture, planning, and environment behavior studies. She is the recipient of the Architecture Magazine/American Institute of Architects Health Research Award. Her research has been supported by agencies that include the National Institute of Mental Health, Active Living Research, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, and the US Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Alexis Dinno, ScD, MPH, MEM
Assistant Professor
Portland State University
Alexis Dinno is an assistant professor of community health at Portland State University. Dr. Dinno earned both a M.E.M. and a M.P.H. from Yale University and an Sc.D. from the School of Public Health at Harvard University where her research unpacked the relationships between urban residential property abandonment and elderly experiences of depression in New Haven, CT using both multilevel modeling techniques, and loop analyses of causal feedback. Before coming to PSU, Dr. Dinno was an Adjunct Professor at California State University East Bay, where she taught epidemiology to graduate and undergraduate students, and developed new methods in applied multivariate statistics. Dr. Dinno was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of California, San Francisco Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education. Her broad areas of interest include social epidemiology, social ecology and quantitative modeling. In addition to her work in community health, Dr. Dinno is an avid capoeirista. She teaches graduate courses in epidemiology, environmental health and biostatistics.
Joel Gittelsohn, PhD
Associate Professor, Center for Human Nutrition
Johns Hopkins, Bloomberg School of Public Health
Dr. Gittelsohn is a Professor in the Center for Human Nutrition, Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health who specializes in the use of qualitative and quantitative information to design, implement and evaluate health and nutrition and physical activity intervention programs to reduce risk for chronic disease in disadvantaged ethnic minority populations. With 132 publications in peer-reviewed journals, he is a leading researcher in the area of formative research and the application of cultural information for intervention development. He has applied these methods and interventions for the prevention of obesity and diabetes among Pacific Island peoples, American Indians, First Nations, Inuit/Inuvialuit and in inner-city Baltimore, to reproductive health issues of women in developing countries, to nutrient deficiencies of Nepalese children and women, and to improve infant feeding in diverse settings. He has developed and evaluated interventions based in homes (home visits), schools, churches and food stores.
Dr. Gittelsohn’s primary work in the past decade has been the development and evaluation of environmental approaches to improve diet and reduce risk for chronic disease. He has conducted store-centered intervention trials aimed at improving food availability and providing skills and nutrition education needed to support healthy food choices in Majuro atoll (Marshall Islands Healthy Stores), on three American Indian reservations (Apache Healthy Stores, Navajo Healthy Stores), in Baltimore City (Baltimore Healthy Stores, Baltimore Healthy Eating Zones, HealthyBodies/Healthy Souls), for Native Hawaiian communities (Healthy Foods Hawaii, Rachel Novotny, PI), and in the Arctic (Healthy Foods North). He developed a multi-institutional (food store, school, health services) program for diabetes prevention in First Nations. These programs have shown success in increasing knowledge, healthy food purchasing and consumption of healthy promoted foods.
Susan Handy, PhD
Professor, Department of Environmental Policy
University of California, Davis
Dr. Handy is a Professor in the Department of Environmental Science and Policy and the Director of the Sustainable Transportation Center at the University of California Davis. Her research focuses on the relationships between transportation and land use, particularly the impact of land development patterns on travel behavior, and on strategies for reducing automobile dependence. She is internationally known for her research on the connection between neighborhood design and walking behavior. She is the associate editor for transportation of the Journal of the American Planning Association and is on the editorial boards of several other international academic journals. She is a member of the Committee on Women's Issues in Transportation of the Transportation Research Board, and she has served on committees of the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council. She has a B.S.E. in Civil Engineering from Princeton University, an M.S. in Civil Engineering from Stanford University, and a Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning from the University of California at Berkeley.
Kathryn Henderson, PhD
Director of School and Community Initiatives
Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, Yale University
Kathryn E. Henderson, Ph.D., is a psychologist and Director of School and Community Initiatives at the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University. She received her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Queen’s University at Kingston, Canada, and completed her clinical internship at Harvard Medical School and her post-doctoral training in the Yale Department of Psychology. She was Clinical Director of the Yale Center for Eating and Weight Disorders from 2003 to 2008. Dr. Henderson has published and presented on binge eating, weight bias and stigma, the prevention and treatment of childhood obesity, the food environment in schools and childcare, and psychosocial and behavioral factors in bariatric surgery. Dr. Henderson’s research has been funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundations’ Healthy Eating Research and Active Living Research programs, the National Institutes of Health, and the United States Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service. Her current research projects include the study of school and childcare wellness policies; interventions in childcare settings to promote nutritional quality in the context of food insecurity; environmental modifications to the school cafeteria to improve nutritional quality; impact of the revised WIC package on food purchases; and statistical methods for assessing school-based interventions.
Christy Hoehner, PhD, MSPH
Assistant Professor
Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine
Christine Hoehner, PhD, MSPH is Assistant Professor at Washington University School of Medicine. At Washington University, she participates in the Siteman Cancer Center Prevention and Control Program, Prevention Research Center, and Institute for Public Health. She completed her PhD in public health studies from Saint Louis University School of Public Health.
Dr. Hoehner’s research interests include obesity and chronic disease prevention, as well as eliminating health disparities across these health outcomes. She is particularly interested in understanding how community environments and policies influence obesity risk. Dr. Hoehner has specific expertise in measurement of the built environments using surveys, community audits and Geographic Information Systems. In addition, she has demonstrated leadership in applying a variety of approaches to understand the role of the non-health sector in influencing health. Currently, she is principal or co-investigator on projects funded by the American Cancer Society, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Thom McKenzie, PhD
Professor of Exercise and Nutritional Sciences
San Diego State University
Dr. Thom McKenzie is Emeritus Professor of Exercise and Nutritional Sciences at San Diego State University. He has authored or co-authored over 160 scientific papers, and has been an investigator on 13 large-scale multidisciplinary research projects supported by the National Institutes of Health. He is currently Co-Principal Investigator on two obesity prevention programs in San Diego and an investigator on five studies of physical activity and associated variables in parks and recreation centers.
Lisa Powell, PhD
Sr. Research Scientist & Research Associate Professor
Department of Economics, University of Illinois, Chicago
Lisa Powell, Ph.D. is a Senior Research Scientist in the Institute for Health Research and Policy and Research Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Dr. Powell has extensive experience as an applied micro-economist in the empirical analysis of the effects of public policy on a series of behavioral outcomes. As Director of the RWJF funded ImpacTeen Youth Obesity Research Team and as Principal Investigator on NIH funded projects much of her current research is on assessing the importance of economic and environmental factors (such as food prices and taxes; access to food stores, eating places, and facilities for physical activity; and television food advertising exposure) on food consumption and physical activity behaviors and as determinants of body mass index and the prevalence of obesity. Dr. Powell’s research also examines school-level food and fitness policies and the association of school meal participation and children’s weight status. In other health-related work, Dr. Powell's work has examined the importance of peer and parental influences on teen smoking, while other studies have highlighted the role of prices and public policies with regard to alcohol use among college students and educational and violence-related outcomes.
Dianne Stanton Ward, EdD
Professor, Department of Nutrition
Gillings School of Public Health, University of North Carolina