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March of Dimes Honors Dr. Siega-Riz for Outstanding Work in Maternal-Fetal Nutrition

Thursday, November 29, 2007 General News
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WHITE PLAINS, N.Y., Nov. 28 Anna Maria Siega-Riz, Ph.D., RD, an Associate Professor of Epidemiology at the University of North Carolina, School of Public Health, has received the March of Dimes Agnes Higgins Award for outstanding achievement in the field of maternal-fetal nutrition.
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The $3,000 award was presented this month to Dr. Siega-Riz at the annual meeting of the American Public Health Association (APHA) in Washington, D.C. The ceremony took place during a joint session of the APHA's Food and Nutrition and Maternal-Child Health sections.
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Dr. Siega-Riz, who holds a joint appointment in the Department of Nutrition and is also a fellow at the Carolina Population Center, is widely recognized for her many outstanding contributions to the field of maternal-fetal nutrition. Dr. Siega-Riz's research career, which has focused on the needs of pregnant women and babies, has spanned almost three decades. Her particular interests include maternal nutritional status and its relationship with birth outcomes; weight gain in pregnancy and obesity development; reproductive epidemiology; child and adolescent dietary behaviors; and trends in dietary intakes among minority populations. She is co-investigator on the Pregnancy, Infection and Nutrition Study, a large epidemiological and prospective study investigating the role of infections, stress, physical activity, and nutrition on preterm births among women receiving prenatal care from public institutions.



Dr. Siega-Riz has served on the National Academy of Sciences/Institute of Medicine Committee to evaluate the food packages for the WIC Program. She also has held leadership roles in a number of prestigious societies, including serving as President of the Society for Pediatric and Perinatal Epidemiology.



She earned her bachelor's and doctoral degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a master's degree at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in reproductive epidemiology at the Carolina Population Center.



Dr. Siega-Riz has written more than 30 out of 80 peer-reviewed journal articles focused on maternal nutritional status and its relationship with birth outcomes.



Agnes Higgins



Agnes Higgins was the longtime director of Canada's Montreal Diet Dispensary, a precursor of American government nutrition programs for pregnant women. A pioneer in devising methods of nutritional assessment and counseling, she greatly advanced the understanding of diet as a crucial factor in healthy pregnancy and prevention of low birthweight. The award was created by the March of Dimes in her honor in 1980.



The March of Dimes is a national voluntary health agency whose mission is to improve the health of babies by preventing birth defects, premature birth, and infant mortality. Founded in 1938, the March of Dimes funds programs of research, community services, education, and advocacy. For more information, visit the March of Dimes Web site at http://www.marchofdimes.com or its Spanish language Web site at http://www.nacersano.org.





SOURCE March of Dimes
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