Dianne Ward, EdD, FTOS, FACSM

Director
Children’s Healthy Weight Research Group

Professor
Department of Nutrition
Gillings School of Global Public Health

Dianne Ward, EdD, is Professor of Nutrition in the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Research Fellow at the Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention. Through her role as Director of the Children’s Healthy Weight Research Group, she is engaged in efforts to prevent childhood obesity through home, school, and community interventions that promote healthy eating and regular physical activity in children and families. Dr. Ward’s team developed NAP SACC, the highly regarded policy and environmental intervention for child care which has been recognized as a model program and adopted by many states and communities. A second generation of NAP SACC, called GoNAPSACC , is an online, interactive version of the original program. Over the past 25 years, Dr. Ward has been PI or Co-investigator for multiple grants funded by NIH, CDC, and the Robert Wood Johnson, Kellogg and NC Blue Cross Blue Shield foundations. She has published more than 200 papers and a book on physical activity interventions for children.

Dr. Ward has published extensively. She is a Fellow in The Obesity Society and the American College of Sport Medicine. In 2016, she received the Bar-Or Award for Excellence in Pediatric Obesity Research from The Obesity Society.