October 27, 2006
Photograph of Dr. Peggy Bentley

Photograph of Dr. Peggy Bentley

Dr. Margaret “Peggy” Bentley, UNC School of Public Health Associate Dean of Global Affairs and professor of nutrition, has been chosen to serve as an Ambassador in the Paul G. Rogers Society for Global Health Research at Research! America.

The Paul G. Rogers Society, named for the former Florida Congressman, was established this year to increase awareness of – and make the case for greater U.S. investment in – research to fight diseases that disproportionately affect the world’s poorest nations. The society received a $1.2 million two-year grant in July 2006 from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as founding support.

In its inaugural year the society will have 25 ambassadors who will agree to meet with opinion leaders and decision makers at the national and/or local levels, make presentations to non-scientific audiences/groups and write letters to the editor and opinion editorials about the need for global health research.

Dr. Bentley is a medical anthropologist whose research focuses on women and infant’s nutrition, infant and young child feeding, behavioral research on sexually transmitted diseases, HIV, and community-based interventions for nutrition and health.

She has expertise in both qualitative and quantitative research methods and the application of these for program development and evaluation. She currently is working on an HIV behavioral intervention prevention study in Chennai, India; on a community-based intervention to improve child growth and development in Andhra Pradesh, India; and on an intervention to decrease maternal-to-child transmission of HIV during breastfeeding in Malawi.

Dr. Bentley directs a five-year, longitudinal study to examine risk factors for the development of pediatric obesity in North Carolina, and an in-home evaluation of an intervention to promote the duration of breastfeeding.

She is a member of the Advisory Board of the Indo-U.S. Joint Working Group on Maternal and Child Health. She also holds membership in the American Institute of Nutrition, the American Anthropological Association, the Society for Medical Anthropology, and the American Public Health Association. She is a Fellow of the Society for Applied Anthropology.

For more information on Research! America and on the Paul G. Rogers Society for Global Health Research, see www.researchamerica.org.

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For more information, contact Ramona DuBose, director of communications for the UNC School of Public Health, by telephone at 919-966-7467 or by email at ramona_dubose@unc.edu.

 

 

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