The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) is one of 27 institutes and centers that make up the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The NIH, in turn, is an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services and is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and health-related research.
Bariatrics is the branch of medicine that deals with the causes, prevention, and treatment of obesity.
The Association for Psychological Science (APS), previously the American Psychological Society, is an international non-profit organization whose mission is to promote, protect, and advance the interests of scientifically oriented psychology in research, application, teaching, and the improvement of human welfare. APS publishes several journals, holds an annual meeting, disseminates psychological science research findings to the general public, and works with policymakers to strengthen support for scientific psychology.
The Pennington Biomedical Research Center is a health science-focused research center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It is part of the Louisiana State University System and conducts clinical, basic, and population science research. It is the largest academically-based nutrition research center in the world, with the greatest number of obesity researchers on faculty. The center's over 500 employees occupy several buildings on the 222-acre (0.90 km2) campus. The center was designed by the Baton Rouge architect John Desmond.
George L. Blackburn was the S. Daniel Abraham Professor of Nutrition and associate director of the Division of Nutrition at Harvard Medical School. He was also Director of the Center for the Study of Nutrition Medicine (CSNM) in the Roberta and Stephen R. Weiner Department of Surgery, and Director of the new Feihe Nutrition Laboratory at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), Boston, Massachusetts.
Thomas Roland Insel is an American neuroscientist, psychiatrist, entrepreneur, and author who led the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) from 2002 until November 2015. Prior to becoming Director of NIMH, he was the founding Director of the Center for Behavioral Neuroscience at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. He is best known for research on oxytocin and vasopressin, two peptide hormones implicated in complex social behaviors, such as parental care and attachment. He announced on Sept. 15, 2015, that he was resigning as the director of the NIMH to join the Life Science division of Google X. On May 8, 2017, CNBC reported that he had left Verily Life Sciences. Insel is a Co-founder with Richard Klausner and Paul Dagum of a digital mental health company named "Mindstrong," a Bay-area startup. He has also co-founded Humanest Care, NeuraWell Therapeutics, and MindSite News and is a member of the scientific advisory board for Compass Pathways, a company that is developing the psychedelic drug psilocybin to treat depression and other mental health disorders. His book, Healing: Our Path from Mental Illness to Mental Health was published by Penguin Random House in February, 2022.
Norman Bruce Anderson is an American scientist who was a tenured professor studying health disparities and mind/body health, and later an executive in government, non-profit, university sectors. Anderson is assistant vice president for research and academic affairs, and research professor of social work and nursing at Florida State University. He previously served as chief executive officer of the American Psychological Association (APA), the largest scientific and professional association for psychologists in the United States. Anderson became the APA's first African-American CEO when he was named to the post in 2003. He was the editor for the APA journal American Psychologist. Prior to joining APA, Anderson was an associate director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and held other roles in academia.
Carl Ronald Kahn is an American physician and scientist, best known for his work with insulin receptors and insulin resistance in diabetes and obesity. He is the Chief Academic Officer at Joslin Diabetes Center, the Mary K. Iacocca Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and a member of the National Academy of Sciences since 1999.
José F. Caro, M.D. is an American physician, scientist, and educator most notable for his research in obesity and diabetes. The Institute for Scientific Information listed him the third most cited investigator in the world in the field of obesity research during the 1991-2000 period for his work on Leptin. Caro is an artist and a signature member of the Pastel Society of America.
The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) is part of the United States National Institutes of Health, which in turn is part of the Department of Health and Human Services. NIDDK is approximately the fifth-largest of the 27 NIH institutes. The institute's mission is to support research, training, and communication with the public in the topic areas of "diabetes and other endocrine and metabolic diseases; digestive diseases, nutritional disorders, and obesity; and kidney, urologic, and hematologic diseases". As of 2021, the Director of the institute is Griffin P. Rodgers, who assumed the position on an acting basis in 2006 and on a permanent basis in 2007.
Mary Jane Rotheram-Borus is a licensed clinical psychologist and professor with the University of California, Los Angeles, Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences. Rotheram is the professor-in-residence in the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior. She is the Director of the Global Center for Children and Families at UCLA and the former director of the Center for HIV Identification, Prevention, and Treatment Services.
Rena R. Wing is recognized for her well-established research on behavioral treatments of obesity. Dr. Wing's research examined positive outcomes for long-term weight loss as well as halting weight gain in individuals who are currently overweight. This led to an important development in Wing's research which was the layout of a lifestyle intervention for those with diabetes, particularly type 2.
Brian Mustanski is an American psychologist noted for his research on the health of LGBT youth, HIV and substance use in young gay and bisexual men, and the use of new media and technology for sexual health promotion and HIV prevention. He is a Professor of Medical Social Sciences, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, and Psychology and Director of the Institute for Sexual and Gender Minority Health and Wellbeing at Northwestern University, Chicago, IL.
Barbara B. Kahn is an endocrinologist and the George Richards Minot professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. She is also the vice chair for research strategy in the department of medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and was formerly the chief of the Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Metabolism at Beth Israel Deaconess. Her research focuses on insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes.
Penny Gordon-Larsen is an American nutrition scientist. She is the Carla Smith Chamblee Distinguished Professor of Global Nutrition at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she served as Associate Dean for Research from 2018 to 2022. In March 2022, she was named interim Vice Chancellor for Research for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is also a Faculty Fellow at the Carolina Population Center. Dr. Gordon-Larsen’s NIH-funded research portfolio focuses on individual-, household-, and community-level susceptibility to obesity and its cardiometabolic consequences, and her work ranges from molecular and genetic to environmental and societal-level factors. She was the 2015 president of The Obesity Society and a member of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases Clinical Obesity Research Panel (CORP).
Catherine Christine Cowie is an American epidemiologist. She is a program director and senior advisor at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.
Judith E. Fradkin is an American physician-scientist. She was the director of the Division of Diabetes, Endocrinology, and Metabolic Diseases at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases from 2000 to 2018.
Thomas A. Wadden is a clinical psychologist and educator who is known for his research on the treatment of obesity by methods that include lifestyle modification, pharmacotherapy, and bariatric surgery. He is the Albert J. Stunkard Professor of Psychology in Psychiatry at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and former director of the university's Center for Weight and Eating Disorders. He also is visiting professor of psychology at Haverford College.
Monica S. Webb Hooper is an American behavioral scientist and clinical psychologist serving as deputy director of the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities. She was a professor at Case Western Reserve University and associate director for cancer disparities research and director of the Office of Cancer Disparities Research in the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Ann King Cashion is an American nurse scientist specialized in genetic markers that predict clinical outcomes. She is a professor emerita in the department of health promotion/disease prevention at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center. Cashion was the acting director of the National Institute of Nursing Research from 2018 to 2019.
