Name: Dori Steinberg
Title at DGHI: postdoctoral associate
What is your role at DGHI and who do you work with? I am a postdoctoral associate working with Gary Bennett.
What do you hope to accomplish here?
I hope to gain experience in how interventions for weight control are conducted both within and outside the U.S. with more disadvantaged populations, particular in the primary care setting. I hope to publish data from a recently completed weight gain prevention intervention among Black women in central NC community health centers and assist with the development of an eHealth-based weight loss intervention conducted in the primary care setting among lower income multi-ethnic men and women.
Tell us more about your background and experience.
I have a bachelor’s degree in nutritional sciences from Cornell University and am a registered dietitian. After college, I worked as a weight loss counselor for large-scale multi-enter efficacy trial examining the impact of lifestyle counseling for weight loss among diabetics to prevent cardiovascular disease outcomes. This experience increased my interest in research, which brought me pursue a masters degree in public health at the Harvard School of Public Health to gain a better understanding of the social determinants of health and research methods, To further enhance my research skills, particularly for intervention research, I obtained a doctoral degree from UNC Chapel Hill in the department of nutrition with am emphasis on intervention and policy.
What does your work focus on and why is this work important for global health?
My work focuses on obesity prevention and treatment with particular emphasis on using technology to examine simple, sustainable behaviors for weight control. My dissertation examined an intervention that focused on daily self-weighing as a simple self-monitoring strategy for weight loss using e-scales that sent participant weights to a website. The intervention was found to be more effective than I expected, and I hope to build on this work by examining the effectiveness with different populations in different settings.
What countries do you work in?
Currently, my work is solely based in the U.S., but I’m looking to leverage what we know works in the U.S. to other countries.
Why are you interested in global health?
I am interested in how evidence-based weight control interventions can be translated to different settings and populations. Gary and his team recently completed an eHealth weight loss intervention in China using a similar approach that has been tested here and found promising results. The ability to adapt an evidence-based approach to a global market is extremely important for disseminating effective strategies for weight control.
To start a conversation with me, ask me:
About my darling 1 year old baby girl, Abigail…
Tell us something interesting people don’t know about you.
I am a HUGE NFL football fan (recently converted after playing on a flag football team with Gary and the rest of the Duke Obesity Prevention Program)
I used to be an avid bowler and competed in the NY state championship!
Where is your office?
I am located at Erwin Terrace in suite 403.
