Title: Food and Nutrition Section News
Author:
Section/SPIG: Food and Nutrition
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Food and Nutrition Section Award Winners for 2004
We would like to congratulate the winners of the 2004 Food and Nutrition Section Awards. This year’s winners are:
Barbara Abrams, DrPH, RD, for The Agnes Higgins Award, sponsored by the March of Dimes, the Food and Nutrition Section and the Maternal and Child Health Section, recognizes an individual who has made outstanding contributions in the area of maternal and child nutrition and exemplary services and professional achievements in improving pregnancy outcomes. Abrams is currently the associate dean of student affairs in the School of Public Health and professor of Epidemiology, Maternal and Child Health and Public Health Nutrition, in the Division of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, at the University of California at Berkeley. Her research interests include body size, nutrition, social factors and reproductive health, nutritional and perinatal epidemiology, maternal and child nutrition, women's health, and nutrition and AIDS. She has authored or co-authored over 50 referred publications and book chapters. Abrams is the recipient of grants from NIH, Bureau of Maternal and Child Health, Department of Defense, and other state and private foundations. Abrams has served on several committees and sub-committees for the Food and Nutrition Board, Institute of Medicine, and National Academy of Sciences, including the Committee on Nutritional Status during Pregnancy and Lactation, the Committee on Scientific Evaluation of WIC Nutrition Risk Criteria, and the Subcommittee for a Clinical Application Guide of the Committee on Nutritional Status during Pregnancy and Lactation. She has also served on the Panel of Expert Consultants for the Women, Infants and Children Special Supplemental Feeding Program (WIC) Eligibility Study II by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and many other expert committees.
Judy F. Wilson, MSPH, RD, for The Mary Egan Award sponsored by the Food and Nutrition Section, which recognizes the professional contributions and outstanding services of a public health nutritionist who has developed new approaches to public health nutrition, mentoring, nutrition education, and addressing special nutrition needs. Wilson is currently the director of nutrition service staff in the Office of Analysis, Nutrition, and Evaluation, of the Food and Nutrition Service at the United States Department of Agriculture. Within 6 months of joining FNS, she planned and implemented the EAT SMART. PLAY HARD. Campaign. She has also been instrumental in the development of child nutrition programs and team nutrition projects including developmental work for Nutrition and Physical Activity the 100way; Power of Choice; It’s Up to You, CACFP Infant Feeding Guide and TN Implementation Guide. Prior to joining the USDA staff, Wilson spent twenty two years with the WIC Program in Washington, D.C., including managing its pilot in 1974. She has held leadership roles in NAWD (VP, Executive Board, and Regional Representative); she was Co-Chair of the Institute Of Medicine’s Committee to develop the Implementation Guide for Nutrition in Pregnancy; she was instrumental in the initiation of the award winning WIC Breastfeeding Peer Counseling Program (BFPC, 1985) and the development of the BFPC guidance used nationally. Wilson has also served as an expert witness for the Department of Justice, Legal Defense Organization on prison nutrition issues.
Patricia Crawford, DrPH, RD, for The Catherine Cowell Award sponsored by the Food and Nutrition Section, which recognizes an individual who has exemplified excellence and achievement in administration, planning, mentoring, and team building in public health nutrition including meeting the special needs of urban populations and young children. Crawford is the co-director of the Center for Weight & Health and Nutrition Specialist/Lecturer in the Department of Nutritional Sciences, University of California, Berkeley. She has almost 10 years of teaching experience in nutritional sciences and public health. Crawford is the recipient of grants from NIH, CDC, USDA, and private foundations. Currently, she is the principal investigator of several studies, including Risk Factors for Poor Bone Health in Latina, Asian, African American and White Women, Paradox of Food Insecurity and Child Obesity in Hispanic Children, the CDC Prevention Centers' Obesity Network and the USDA sponsored, 5 State WIC Child Obesity Intervention Study.
Suzanne Murphy, PhD, RD, for the Excellence in Dietary Guidance Award, co-sponsored by the Produce for Better Health Foundation and the Food and Nutrition Section, which recognizes an individual who has made outstanding contributions in the area of dietary guidance formulation, research, education, or policy change. The Produce for Better Health Foundation supports this monetary award. Murphy is a research professor at the Cancer Research Center of Hawaii at the University of Hawaii (Honolulu, HI) and director of the Nutrition Support Shared Resource at the Center. Her research interests include dietary assessment methodology, development of food composition databases (with emphasis on inclusion of ethnic foods), communication of nutrition principles (with emphasis on multi-cultural populations), and nutritional epidemiology of chronic diseases (with emphasis on cancer and obesity). Murphy has served as a member of the National Nutrition Monitoring Advisory Council and as vice-chair of the 2000 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee. She has served on several Institute of Medicine panels including the Subcommittee on Interpretation and Uses of Dietary Reference Intakes, which she chaired for two years; the Subcommittee on Upper Safe Reference Levels of Nutrients, and the Panel on Calcium and Related Nutrients and the Committee to Review the WIC food package, which she is presently chairs.
Deborah Bentzel, MPH, for The Food and Nutrition Section Student Award, sponsored by the Food and Nutrition Section, which recognizes the student submitting the highest scoring abstract for an oral presentation at the national meeting. Bentzel is a research assistant, Boston University Thalidomide Study, at the Slone Epidemiology Center of Boston University School of Public Health.
Reported by:
Geraldine S. Perry-Allen, DrPH, RD
Chair, Awards Committee
Annie B. Carr, MS, RD
Co-Chair, Awards Committee