Siega-Riz joins School as Research Chief
The University of Virginia School of Nursing announced today that Anna Maria Siega-Riz, PhD, has joined its ranks as associate dean for research, succeeding Linda F. C. Bullock, who retired in June, 2017.
Siega-Riz—a scholar in nutrition, maternal and child health—will transition from her role as professor in UVA School of Medicine’s Departments of Public Health Sciences and Obstetrics & Gynecology, joining UVA Nursing on September 25. Prior to her role at UVA, she was associate dean for academic affairs of UNC Chapel Hill’s Gillings School of Global Public Health and leader of its Reproductive, Perinatal, and Pediatric Program in its Department of Epidemiology.
Siega-Riz's body of research zeroes in on the connection between maternal weight and diet and adverse pregnancy outcomes, from gestational diabetes to hypertension, pre-eclampsia to preterm birth. Currently, she is part of the Hispanic Community Health Study/Study of Latinos funded by NIH.
At UVA, she’s helped establish a pregnancy database (ONOS) to serve as a biological repository for future studies related to the first 1,000 days of life, and is part of a UVA-INOVA team examining the effects of a mindfulness-based stress reduction intervention for obese pregnant women that examines maternal and infant outcomes, with fellow UVA Nursing scholar and assistant dean for research Jeanne Alhusen. Over the course of her career, Siega-Riz has garnered more than $9 million in research funding as primary investigator.
Siega-Riz previously served on the Dietary Guidelines Federal Advisory Committee (2013-2015) and the National Heart, Lung and Blood advisory council and five Institute of Medicine committees, including the revision to Women, Infants and Children (WIC) food packages and the gestational weight gain guidelines. She's also received numerous awards, including the March of Dimes Agnes Higgins Award for Maternal and Fetal Nutrition (2007), UNC’s Center for Women’s Health Research Award for Excellence (2004), and the American Public Health Association’s Mary Egan Award (2000).
Siega-Riz earned both a PhD in nutrition and epidemiology and a BS in public health from UNC Chapel Hill, and a MS from UNC-Greensboro in food and nutrition.
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