principal investigator
Dr. Dana Dabelea, MD, PhD
Conrad M. Riley Professor of Epidemiology and Pediatrics;
Director, Lifecourse Epidemiology of Adiposity and Diabetes (LEAD) Center,
Colorado School of Public Health
investigators
Katherine A. Sauder, PhD
LEAD Center Assistant Director of Translation Research | Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Section of Nutrition
Dr. Sauder received her BA in Psychology (Millersville University of Pennsylvania), her MS and PhD in Biobehavioral Health (Penn State University) and completed her Postdoctoral Fellowship in Nutrition (University of Colorado). Dr. Sauder’s research examines how nutrition and other modifiable factors contribute to chronic disease in women and children. She uses both observational and intervention methods to identify and test health behavior prevention strategies with potential for widespread implementation. On-going projects span the intergenerational cycle, including pregnancy, infancy, childhood, adolescence, and child-bearing years.
Anne P. Starling, PhD
LEAD Center Assistant Director for Environmental Health | Assistant Professor, Epidemiology, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill | Adjunct Assistant Professor, Epidemiology, Colorado School of Public Health
Anne Starling, PhD, is an environmental epidemiologist. Her work focuses on environmental chemical exposures in early life and how they affect children’s growth and subsequent risk of chronic disease. Areas of interest include endocrine-disrupting chemicals and traffic-related air pollution. In her work with the Center for Lifecourse Epidemiology of Adiposity and Diabetes, she studies biological pathways by which environmental exposures may influence metabolic health, including epigenetic mechanisms. Dr. Starling is a PI on two ancillary studies to the Healthy Start study, examining the health impacts for mothers and children of environmental chemical exposures during pregnancy.
Wei Perng, PhD
LEAD Center Assistant Director of ‘Omics Research | Assistant Professor, Epidemiology
Dr. Perng is a lifecourse and ‘omics epidemiologist who conducts investigations in long-term observational cohorts of mother-offspring dyads to understand early origins of obesity-related disease.
Traci Bekelman, PhD, MPH
Study Coordinator- Healthy Start and ECHO | Research Assistant Professor, Epidemiology
Dr. Bekelman received a BA in exercise physiology (University of California, Berkeley), an MPH in International Health (Johns Hopkins) and a joint MA/PhD in Anthropology (University of Colorado, Boulder). She completed her postdoctoral fellowship in pediatric nutrition (University of Colorado). Her Healthy Start research focuses on health disparities related to diet and obesity in children, the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on children's lifestyle behaviors, and identifying the best tools to measure what children eat.
Allison L. Shapiro, MPH, PhD
Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Colorado School of Public Health
Allie's biggest accomplishment while working with the Healthy Start Study is she established the Baby Biology of Intra-Uterine Metabolic Programming (BabyBUMP) project, the mechanistic arm of the Healthy Start I study. In one component of this project, she collected and cultured over 160 unique umbilical cord progenitor cell lines, which are used to study the impact of nutritional and metabolic exposures on fat and muscle development in-vitro. Her current area of study is maternal metabolism and nutrition in pregnancy and neurodevelopment. She is specifically interested in how exposure to diabetes during pregnancy impacts the brain response of an infant and/or child to eating or drinking sugar.