About
Overview
The purpose of this research study is to examine what women eat and the reasons for their food choices during pregnancy and after their baby is born. The study will also examine how thoughts, values and beliefs related to food influence a woman’s health during pregnancy and the postpartum period, along with the health of her baby.
Study Organization
This study is funded and led by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) of the National Institutes of Health, in collaboration with the University of North Carolina and The Emmes Corporation.
Tonja Nansel, PhD
Dr. Nansel is a senior investigator in the Health Behavior Branch of the Division of Intramural Population Health Research at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Dr. Nansel has expertise in the study of health-related and dietary behaviors, including the development and testing of behavioral interventions within the health care setting. Dr. Nansel serves as the study’s overall Principal Investigator and has technical responsibility for the PEAS study including its scientific integrity.
Aiyi Liu, PhD
Aiyi Liu, PhD, is a Senior Investigator who has been a member of the Biostatistics and Bioinformatics Branch since 2002. He received his doctorate degree from the University of Rochester in 1997. His research interests include: general statistical estimation theory, sequential methodology and adaptive designs with applications to clinical trials and other medical studies, linear models and regression analysis, analysis of repeated measurements and longitudinal data, multivariate data analysis and related topics, statistical methods for biomarkers including diagnostic biomarkers and ROC curve analysis, statistical methods for pooled assessments, and measurement errors.
Anna Maria Siega-Riz, PhD, RD
Dr. Siega-Riz, a nutritional epidemiologist, uses a multidisciplinary team perspective as a way to address complex problems such as prematurity, fetal programming, racial disparities and obesity. She has been involved in several large cohort studies involving pregnant women, children and Hispanics as well as one multi-centered intervention study for preventing type 2 diabetes in middle school children.
Myles Faith, PhD
Dr. Faith studies familial influences on the development of child eating patterns and obesity. His work also focuses on lifestyle interventions for childhood obesity treatment/prevention, having received funding from the NIH and the American Diabetes Association to investigate these issues in 4 to 8 year old youth. He served on the Nutrition Committee for the American Heart Association’s Council on Nutrition, Physical Activity and Metabolism (NPAM), and was a standing member of the NIH Psychosocial Risk and Disease Prevention Study Section.
Kyle Burger, MPH, RD, PhD
Dr. Burger’s primary area of research focuses on eating behavior, how it evolves, implicit drivers and explicit perceptions of food intake. Specifically, how these aspects of ingestive behavior relate to habitual consumption, executive control, and weight regulation. His labs examines these questions using direct and indirect measures of food intake, brain imaging techniques (functional MRI), and a variety of behavioural and self-report measures.
Grace Shearrer, PhD
Dr. Shearrer studies the homeostatic and hedonic motivations to eat. Specifically, how hedonic signals influence homeostatic mechanisms both neurologically and hormonally.
Ellen Clevenger-Firley, MS, RD - Project Manager
Ellen is a Registered Dietitian with over 25 years of experience in the areas of hospital nutrition, community nutrition, program development and nutritional research. She received her undergraduate degree from University of Maryland and Master’s Degree in Nutritional Biochemistry from Case Western Reserve University. Ellen has long had an interest in the area of maternal child health and serves as the Project Manager for the PEAS Study.
Kiira Lyons, MA - Research Assistant
Kiira serves as a research assistant for the PEAS project. She received her Bachelor’s degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and her Master’s degree from North Carolina Central University. She has over five years of experience working in research across various fields. Kiira carries out prenatal and postpartum visits with PEAS participants at both the UNC Women’s Hospital and Weaver Crossing locations.
Olivia Barnes, BS - Research Assistant
Olivia graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in May of 2016 with a degree in Biology. She works as a research assistant with the PEAS project and carries out prenatal and postpartum visits with participants at the UNC Women’s Hospital.
Laarni Lapat - Work Study Assistant
Laarni is an undergraduate student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill studying Exercise and Sports Science with a minor in Religious Studies. She will graduate in Spring 2018. She is a work-study research assistant and carries out prenatal and postpartum visits with PEAS participants at the UNC Women’s Hospital.
Debbie Shim – Research Assistant
Franca Barton, MS
Franca Benedicty Barton is a biostatistician with a 35-year record of NIH-sponsored collaboration with leading medical investigators conducting research that has resulted in changing clinical practice, as well as advancing medical knowledge and statistical practice. Her early-career collaboration with the NEI-sponsored, multi-center Early Treatment Diabetic Retinopathy Study in the 1980s-90s resulted in widely expanded use of laser photocoagulation for many thousands of people with diabetic retinopathy in the US and around the world, still a standard of care for DR (Refs #1-3). Assuming broader study leadership in the 1990s, her collaboration with the NHLBI-sponsored Multicenter Study of Hydroxyurea in Sickle Cell Anemia (MSH), under the direction of Johns Hopkins’ Samuel Charache, resulted in US-FDA approval in 1996 of a revised formulation--Droxia®--designed specifically for this orphan disease, which was rapidly approved around the world (Refs #4-5).
Sara Jolles
Graduated from James Madison University with a BA in International Relations, fluent in French, and has been with The Emmes Corporation since 2011.
Holly Brindley, MPH
Holly Rainis began working at The Emmes Corporation just prior to graduating with her Master’s in Public Health (Epidemiology track) from the George Washington University in 2013. She completed her Bachelor’s in Animal Science from the University of Delaware in 2010.
Sophia Pallas
Sophia has been an Administrative Coordinator at The Emmes Corporation for over 20 years. She has joined the PEAS DCC team to provide organizational expertise, quality management and regulatory assistance.