Debra Haire-Joshu, Ph.D., R.N., M.S., M.A.

Approved Mentor (Primary, Mentoring Committee)
Washington University in St. Louis, Brown School

Debra Haire-Joshu is a scholar of health behavior who develops, tests, and disseminates population-wide interventions to reduce obesity and prevent diabetes, particularly among underserved women and children. She is the Joyce Wood Professor of Public Health and Medicine at Washington University in St. Louis, with a joint appointment to the Brown School and School of Medicine and is a senior scholar in the Washington University Institute for Public Health. Dr. Haire-Joshu is Director of the Center for Obesity Prevention and Policy Research (since 1998) and Principal Investigator of the NIH-funded Center for Diabetes Translation Research (since 2011), which supports a network of researchers addressing health equity among rural, American Indian-Alaskan Native, and African American populations. Her current research focuses on the testing and dissemination of interventions embedded within the routine practice of a national home-visiting program, designed to prevent weight gain among women of childbearing age. Dr. Haire-Joshu was a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellow which informs her work linking evidence to policy, including the development of a bistate obesity policy tracking database. Dr. Haire-Joshu has published extensively in peer reviewed literature and authored textbooks addressing diabetes management across the lifespan and transdisciplinary public health, as well as numerous chapters on obesity prevention.