Barry Popkin, Catherine Geissler, Ricardo Uauy, Denise Coitinho, Roger Hughes, Urban Jonsson: six more leading participant-speakers at Rio2012

Access Rio2012 dedicated website here
Access Rio2012 programme structure here
Access Rio2012 theme, purposes and principles here
Access first line-up of speakers here
Access second line-up of speakers here
Register for Rio2012 here

The Rio2012 team reports. The theme of our congress being held next April, is as shown above, knowledge-policy-action. The six participant-speakers we feature this month all have outstanding ability and experience at translating knowledge of public health nutrition into public policy and action proposals or programmes. They are also all Association members, whose profiles are posted here on our website.

The participant-speakers profiled

Barry Popkin, of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH) has done more than anybody to promote what are commonly termed the demographic-nutritional-epidemiological transitions, following the pioneering work of Abdel Omran. This term refers to the fact that when populations shift from rural areas into cities, their food supplies and dietary patterns change, they usually become less physically active, and as a result obesity and chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and various cancers become epidemic. He is a leading scholar of this phenomenon, which has led to the UN High-Level meeting on the prevention and control of non-communicable diseases. A US citizen, he has special knowledge of China, India and other Asian countries, and has worked with Carlos Monteiro in Brazil. He is the director of the Interdisciplinary Obesity Center and faculty member of the UNC-CH Nutrition Department and also of the Economics Department. He is also a compelling speaker and forceful debater.

Catherine Geissler of King's College London is also co-convenor on behalf of the Association of the Rio2012 programme committee (see the news story above). She is co-chief editor of the standard textbook published in the UK, Human Nutrition and Dietetics.

Ricardo Uauy works at the University of Chile, and is a former director of INTA, Chile's national nutrition institute. He is also professor of nutrition at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. A paediatrician trained in the US, he is an authority on fatty acids, was chair of the expert consultation responsible for the WHO 2003 '916' report on Diet, Nutrition and the Prevention of Chronic Diseases, and is the immediate former president of the International Union of Nutritional Sciences. Also, he masterminded the programme for the consultation called by the president of the Chilean senate in October, at which a number of Association members spoke (see the relevant news story published last month).

Denise Coitinho is the executive secretary of the UN System Standing Committee on Nutrition (SCN). Formerly she was head of nutrition at WHO Geneva, and then co-responsible for REACH – the UN End Child Hunger and Undernutrition Initiative. A Brazilian citizen, she is visiting professor in nutrition at the University of Brasília, and as head of the Brazilian federal government's food and nutrition policy unit in the early 1990s, had a special responsibility for the Bolsa Familia (family food basket) programme.

Roger Hughes, of Griffith University in Australia, is the Association's professional affairs secretary. With Roger Shrimpton, Elisabetta Recine, Association president Barrie Margetts and others, he is working on a special project on developing competency standards in the profession, whose first major report will be published later in World Nutrition.

Urban Jonsson is a former director of nutrition at UNICEF headquarters in New York. When there he took the lead in devising the UNICEF conceptual framework of the immediate and also underlying and basic determinants of disease and health. Initially devised to give a full account of the causes of child malnutrition, it is now applied to other states of health and disease throughout life. His WN commentary on paradigm shifts in public health nutrition was published last year. He is an authority on adequate and good nutrition as a human right, as a leader of the relevant SCN working group, and also now as director of The Owls, an international consultancy company in the area of human rights, democracy and development.

We will be featuring many more speaker-participants in the coming months.

Rio2012: Confirmed speaker-participants

Barrie Margetts
Barry Popkin
Branka Legetic
Carlos Monteiro
Catherine Geissler
Cesar Victora
Chunming Chen
Claude Fischler
Corinna Hawkes
David Nabarro
David Sanders
Denise Coitinho
Edgard Rebouças
Elisabetta Recine
Elisaldo Carllini
Emorn Wasantwasut
Enrique Jacoby
Fabio Gomes
Flavio Valente
Francesco Branca
Geoffrey Cannon
Graham MacGregor
Harriet Kuhnlein
Ibrahim Elmadfa
Juan Rivera
Kelly Brownell
Kenneth Camargo
Lindsay Allen
Luciene Burlandy
Luiz Augusto Facchini
Maria Lucia Bosi
Marion Nestle
Mary L'Abbe
Mary Shawa
Miguel Bruno
Patricia Jaime
Patti Rundall
Philip James
Ravindra Joshi
Renato Maluf
Ricardo Uauy
Roger Hughes
Shiriki Kumanyika
Stuart Gillespie
Tim Lang
Urban Jonsson
Zulfiqar Bhutta

This list is constantly updated on the congress website as new speakers confirm their participation. Each month from now on until the the congress we will feature a new group of speakers, and as from November we will be including their stories and profiles. Stay tuned for more information also on Facebook and Twitter!