Dr.William Dietz at CDC

[Kuester, Sarah]

Dear Colleagues:

Thank you for bearing with my crossposting this message.

Below is the press statement CDC issued today regarding
the selection of Dr. William Dietz as the new director for our
Division of Nutrition and Physical Activity.

Thank you,
Sarah Kuester
Centers for Disease Control & Prevention
sak2 at cdc.gov

 --------------------------------
CDC Press Statement

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE	   Contact: Tim Hensley
October 23, 1997			   Division of Nutrition and
				      Physical Activity (CDC)
				   (770) 488-5820
				   or CDC's
				   Office of Communications
				   (404) 639-3286

New Director to Lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's
Division of Nutrition and Physical Activity

	The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
today announced the selection of William H. Dietz, M.D., Ph.D., to
direct the CDC's Division of Nutrition and Physical Activity, a program
under the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health
Promotion.  Dietz will join CDC November 3.
	As the division's director, Dietz will lead a multi-faceted
program aimed at preventing risk factors contributing to chronic
diseases.
	Dietz's work has focused on nutrition in children and pediatric
obesity. In 1995 he received the John Stalker Award from the American
School Food Service Association for his efforts to improve school
lunches.  Recently, he has studied energy expenditure in obese and
non-obese adolescents and in non-obese pre-adolescents. He has
written more than 100 publications in the scientific literature on child
and 
adolescent obesity and associated factors.
	"It is encouraging to have Dietz lead CDC's nutrition and
physical activity programs as we increase our efforts to reduce the
burden of chronic disease in the next century," said  James S. Marks,
M.D., M.P.H., Director of the National Center for Chronic Disease
Prevention and Health Promotion.
	The Division of Nutrition and Physical Activity conducts
research on preventing obesity, assessing physical activity, and
treating iron-deficiency anemia.  The Division also maintains two
surveillance systems that monitor nutrition and behavioral risk factors
of pregnant women, infants, and children.
	Before joining CDC, Dietz was Professor of Pediatrics at the
Tufts University School of Medicine and Director of Clinical Nutrition
at
the Floating Hospital of New England Medical Center Hospitals.  He
received his B.A. from Wesleyan University in 1966 and his M.D. from
the University of Pennsylvania in 1970.  Following an internship at
Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, he spent three years studying
insect-borne viruses in the Middle America Research Unit of the
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease in Panama. After
completing his residency at Upstate Medical Center, he received a
Ph.D. in Nutritional Biochemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT).
	In addition to Dietz's academic work, he has been Associate
Director of the Clinical Research Center at MIT and the Director of the
Boston Obesity/Nutrition Research Center.  He is vice president-elect
of the American Society for Clinical Nutrition and is past president of
the North American Association for the Study of Obesity.

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