Siega-Riz Appointed to Food and Nutrition Board of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine

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Anna Maria Siega-Riz
Anna Maria Siega-Riz

Anna Maria Siega-Riz, dean of the School of Public Health and Health Sciences and professor in the departments of nutrition and biostatistics and epidemiology, has been appointed to the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. Her three-year appointment became effective Wednesday, July 1.

Established in 1940, the Food and Nutrition Board, within the academies’ Health and Medicine Division, addresses issues of safety and adequacy of the nation's food supply; establishes principles and guidelines for good nutrition; and provides authoritative judgment on the relationships among food intake, nutrition, and health maintenance and disease prevention.

Siega-Riz is an internationally recognized expert on maternal and child nutrition who served on the 2015 Federal Advisory Committee for the USDA’s Dietary Guidelines for Americans. She serves on the National Institutes of Health Council of Councils and the academies’ Health and Medicine Division Advisory Committee, and has previously served on the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute Advisory Council and the USDA/DHHS Pregnancy Technical Expert Committee, B-24 Months Project.

“I am delighted and honored to serve in this capacity,” says Siega-Riz. “The work of the Food and Nutrition Board is critical to our mission of improving the health of the American population, and I am especially excited that during my term, we may be revisiting the Dietary Recommended Intakes of various nutrients for children from birth to 24 months of age.”

Siega-Riz joined the UMass Amherst School of Public Health and Health Sciences as its dean in 2019. Prior to joining the university, she was professor of nursing and associate dean for research at the University of Virginia School of Nursing; and associate dean for academic affairs at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Gillings School of Global Public Health; and leader of its reproductive, perinatal and pediatric program in its department of epidemiology.