Welcome to the Johns Hopkins Center for Human Nutrition. The Center was founded in 1990 as a mechanism for strengthening nutrition research and training at Johns Hopkins, within the Department of International Health where it resides, across other departments in the Bloomberg School of Public Health, as well as in key collaborating institutions such as the School of Medicine, School of Nursing and Kennedy Krieger Institute. Today the Center has some 50 faculty, comprised of 20 full-time faculty and 30 affiliated faculty.
Through the Center, we have expanded from a small group of faculty focused on child undernutrition in developing countries, to a larger, interdisciplinary group that also addresses the many facets of nutrition as it relates to obesity, cancer and chronic diseases at the global level. If you examine our publication lists, you will find important policy documents such as the "WHO Global Burden of Disease" (2004) and the World Bank-sponsored "Disease Control Priorities in Developing Countries II" (2006). Center faculty are involved in IOM committees that determine the Dietary Reference Intakes for the United States, the body of research on nutrition and cancer from the World Cancer Research Fund, as well as WHO committees informing the development of growth references for preschoolers and adolescents. Faculty have led efforts to publish key reference works in nutrition, such as International Public Health: Diseases, Programs, Systems, and Policies (2006), Nutrition and Health in Developing Countries (2007), and last but not least, the second edition of the Encyclopedia of Human Nutrition (2007). When I first came here in 1990, many in the public health community did not know that Hopkins had a nutrition program. We redesigned the MHS program in Human Nutrition, and most recently have linked with the Johns Hopkins Bayview Dietetics Program to provide students with the opportunity to complete one of two American Dietetics Association approved dietetics internships with their MHS or MPH degree program. Through these initiatives, we solidify our training of master's level professionals interested in working in public health nutrition in the United States and throughout the world. We also revamped our PhD program and are proud that many of our graduates are working in academic, research and applied policy positions in universities, government and multilateral organizations. Now it is clear that the Center for Human Nutrition provides a strong voice for nutrition at Hopkins and we are recognized around the world as a leader in research and training in this field. We will continue to solidify our strengths in nutrition problem areas while building Center expertise to address the public health nutrition challenges of the coming decade. Sincerely, Laura Caulfield, PhD Director, Center for Human Nutrition |