Obesity guideline update panel

Denise E. Wilfley, PhD, is a professor of psychological and brain sciences and professor of medicine, pediatrics, and psychiatry at Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine, who served on the panel that developed APA’s (2018) original clinical practice guideline for the behavioral treatment of obesity and overweight in children and adolescents. Wilfley’s program of research centers on the causes, prevention, and treatment of eating disorders and obesity among children, adolescents, and adults. Her pioneering work at the intersection of eating disorders and obesity has been integral to the formal recognition of binge eating disorder and to establishing the efficacy of interventions for recurrent binge eating syndromes. Wilfley has also developed evidence-based treatments for children and families that reduce obesity, improve nutrition and physical activity, and enhance psychosocial outcomes. She has extensive experience in collaborating with multiple stakeholders on the adoption of evidence-based treatments and training the future generation of clinical researchers. She is a fellow of The Obesity Society and Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research.

E. Thomaseo Burton, PhD, MPH, ABPP, is a board-certified pediatric psychologist in the Healthy Weight Program of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, who has more than 10 years of experience treating children and adolescents with overweight and obesity. Burton has extensive experience in working with Black/African American youth and families with overweight or obesity under the guidance of existing clinical practice guidelines, evidence-based treatments, and cultural humility. Since his postdoctoral fellowship in pediatric weight management at Boston Children’s Hospital / Harvard Medical School, he has committed his career to addressing disparities and social determinants that make youth more susceptible to obesity and related comorbidities. Burton’s current work seeks to adapt traditional psychological interventions to youth from low-income, resource-limited, and racial/ethnic diverse backgrounds.

Kerri Boutelle, PhD, is a professor in the Department of Pediatrics, Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science, and Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), and a licensed clinical psychologist. Boutelle is also the founder and director of the Center for Healthy Eating and Activity Research at UCSD, where she and her colleagues provide no-cost intervention research studies and outpatient care for children, adolescents, and adults with obesity or other eating disorders. Boutelle’s research and clinical experience includes working with children, adolescents, and adults with multiple gender identities, race, and ethnicity, in particular Latinx families, children with intellectual disabilities and autism, and families that range across the socioeconomic strata. She is considered one of the leading national and international experts in the behavioral treatment of children and adolescents with obesity.

Boutelle’s research interests include identifying targets for behavioral treatment of overeating and obesity and to translate these programs to the clinics and to develop novel targets for the treatment of overeating and obesity, based on cognitive science and neuroscience. Boutelle has consistently received NIH funding since 2002 and was one of the first to receive funding by the U.S. Department of Defense to treat binge eating and weight loss among veterans. She is currently a member of the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior, the Eating Disorder Research Society, and the Association of Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies.

Ariana M. Chao, PhD, CRNP, FNP-BC, RN, is an associate professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing and adjunct associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) School of Nursing. Chao formerly served as assistant professor at Penn School of Nursing as well as medical director at the Perelman School of Medicine’s Center for Weight and Eating Disorders and the director of enrichment programs at the Center for Nutritional Science and Medicine. She is nationally recognized for her leadership in obesity treatment. Her program of research focuses on the development of innovative treatments for obesity and related eating behaviors that improve physical and mental health. This includes developing and evaluating novel treatments for obesity, using biobehavioral approaches and considering social determinants of health to improve treatment access and efficacy. She has over a decade of experience as a family nurse practitioner and has published more than 100 articles. Her work has been supported by the National Institutes of Health as well as foundation and industry sponsors. Chao received her Bachelor and Master of Science in Nursing from Boston College, earned her PhD in nursing science at Yale University, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania.

Amy Gross, PhD, LP, BCBA-D, a pediatric psychologist and board-certified behavior analyst, is an associate professor in the department of pediatrics at the University of Minnesota, as well as the division director of the Clinical Behavioral Neuroscience Division. She has served on the executive committee of the Center for Pediatric Obesity Medicine since its inception in 2017. Her clinical interests include pediatric weight management and weight loss surgery, chronic disease management, as well as Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders and other neurodevelopmental disorders. Since joining the University of Minnesota Medical School in 2011, she has been the sole psychologist for the multidisciplinary pediatric weight management clinic, which includes six medical providers, four dieticians, and two nurse coordinators, and serves over 600 new patients per year who reside in urban and rural Minnesota as well as out of state. In addition to being a co-investigator on NIH-funded clinical trials, she is principal investigator of an R01 investigating neurobehavioral predictors of weight loss and weight loss maintenance to lifestyle modification therapy and pharmacotherapy for adolescents with obesity.

Melanee May has several years of experience in serving as a patient parent partner on the Family Advisory Board for the behavioral treatment of obesity and overweight. Further, she served as a rapid response team member for TEAM UP, a research study to facilitate weight loss and healthy lifestyles among children and families, from 2018–20. In addition to her leadership and advocacy work, May also has personal family experience of obesity, including from the parent perspective.

Keeley Pratt, PhD, IMFT, is a licensed marriage/couple and family therapist and an associate professor in the Human Development and Family Science Program, Couple and Family Therapy Specialization in the Department of Human Sciences at The Ohio State University (OSU). Pratt also has formal appointments with the OSU departments of surgery and pediatrics to work with Nationwide Children’s Hospital Center for Healthy Weight and Nutrition. Pratt has extensive clinical and research experience using family systems approaches and assessments as screeners in clinical care and as a theoretical orientation for clinical intervention and research. Pratt’s clinical and scholarly experience focuses on family-based and community interventions in pediatric and adult weight management and bariatric surgery with a social determinants of health lens. Pratt completed her doctorate in medical family therapy at East Carolina University, where she worked in pediatric weight management, health care, and community settings with rural, low-income racial/ethnic diverse families.

Sarah-Jeanne Salvy, PhD, is a professor of medicine at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and adjunct professor of population and public health science at the University of Southern California. Since 2005, Salvy’s research has focused on the role of social factors in obesity as well as on the implementation of multisystemic dietary and physical activity interventions that can be widely disseminated and sustained. In 2019, Salvy was invited to brief the U.S. Congress in Washington, DC, on implementing a culturally sensitive, maternal-child obesity prevention curriculum as part of Maternal and Children Health Services. Salvy and her colleagues have spearheaded the cultural tailoring and clinical implementation of behavioral obesity and diabetes interventions in economically, ethnically, and racially diverse populations in Southern California and Central Alabama.