The National Weight Control Registry

Developers

Rena R. Wing, PhD

Rena Wing, PhD, is Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at Brown Medical School and Director of the Weight Control & Diabetes Research Center at The Miriam Hospital. Dr. Wing received her Ph.D. degree in Social Relations from Harvard University in 1971 and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Massachusetts Mental Health Center. Dr. Wing is well known for her programmatic research investigating the most effective strategies for long-term weight loss. She has published over 200 peer-reviewed articles in the area of obesity treatment and prevention. She was the principal investigator on the Diabetes Prevention Program and developed the lifestyle intervention being used in all twenty seven centers in that study. In addition, she is principal investigator at The Miriam Hospital site for a fifteen-center trial entitled, Study of Health Outcomes of Weight Loss, and serves as chairperson of this multi-site study. Wing is a member of the council for the National Institute of Diabetes and Diagestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) and serves on the NIDDK Task Force on the Prevention and Treatment of Obesity. She co-founded the National Weight Control Registry with James Hill in 1994.  Dr. Wing has received numerous awards, including the Taking Off Pounds Sensibly (TOPS) Award for Outstanding Achievement in obesity research.

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