In addition to serving as President of the American College of Preventive Medicine, Dr. Alexander is a faculty member at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and serves as the director of the general preventive medicine residency program.  Her faculty responsibilities include directing the Mid-Atlantic Public Health Training Center and providing the medical direction to the community health worker program of the Urban Health Institute. She is also the occupational medical director for McCormick and Company.Dr. Alexander has a BA and an MD from Cornell University. She earned her MPH and completed her preventive medicine residency from Johns Hopkins University.

Miriam Alexander has a long standing commitment to the American College of Preventive Medicine.  As a preventive medicine resident she was both the secretary and then the president of the Association of Preventive Medicine Residents.  Several years later she became chair of the Young Physicians Section and then received the College’s Rising Star award. Dr. Alexander was the chair of the Membership committee and a member of several other committees as well.  She served for two terms as the Mid-Atlantic regent and as the chair of the honors and awards committee.  She has also been the recipient of the Distinguished Service award.

She continues her commitment to the specialty of preventive medicine by having served 9 years on the American Board of Preventive Medicine, most recently as the Vice Chair for General Preventive Medicine.  She also serves on the Residency Review Committee for Preventive Medicine of the ACGME.

Relevant publications include:
Prevention in the United States Affordable Care Act
Physician counseling to prevent overweight in children and adolescents: American College of Preventive Medicine position statement

After receiving her PhD in healthy policy from Harvard, Dr. Sara Bleich joined the faculty at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in the department of Health Policy and Management. She is primarily interested in public health problems that affect a wide variety of populations and have high policy relevance. Her research focuses on obesity and its related diseases as well as public policy options for obesity prevention and control.  

Dr. Bleich's research fits into two broad categories.  The first focuses on understanding disparities in physician practice patterns of obesity care.  Often obesity care is sub-optimal, and very few patients actually get diagnosed with obesity-a key predictor of weight-related counseling. The second focuses on changing the food environment to encourage healthier eating and reduce caloric consumption.

Relevant publications include: 
Impact of physician body mass index on obesity care and beliefs
Physician practice patterns of obesity diagnosis and weight-related counseling
Physician respect for patients with obesity 

Lawrence J. Cheskin, M.D., F.A.C.P., is Associate Professor of Health, Behavior & Society, with a joint appointment in Human Nutrition, and in Medicine at Johns Hopkins. He is also former director of the Gastroenterology Division, Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center. Dr. Cheskin founded the Johns Hopkins Weight Management Center in 1990. He is the principal investigator on several research grants and is a frequent contributor to research and popular articles on weight management. 

Relevant publications include:
Nutraceutical supplements for weight loss: a systematic review
Pharmacologic treatment of obesity
Behavioral approaches to the problems of obesity

Erica Frank, MD, MPH, is a Tier I Canada Research Chair, a Professor in the School of Population and Public Health and in the Department of Family Practice in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, and a Senior Scholar of the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research. She is also Founding Director of Health Sciences Online (creating a virtual health sciences university), Past President of Physicians for Social Responsibility, and the Research Director for the Annenberg Physician Training Program.

Until 2006, she was a tenured Professor, Vice Chair (Academic Affairs), and Division Director (Preventive Medicine) in the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine, at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia. She also directed Emory’s Preventive Medicine Residency Program, and had a clinical practice in cholesterol management. Following a transitional internship at the Cleveland Clinic, she was residency (Yale, 1990) and fellowship (Stanford, 1993) trained, and also board certified, in preventive medicine.

Her major research theme is physicians’ personal and clinical prevention habits. She is Principal Investigator of three national studies on physician health: (1) the Women Physicians’ Health Study, a questionnaire-based study of 4,501 U.S. women M.D.s, and the first large study of their personal and professional characteristics, yielding more than fifty publications; (2) the “Healthy Doc – Healthy Patient” project, a 17 U.S. medical school study testing and showing the positive effect of encouraging medical students’ healthy behaviors on their personal and clinical prevention habits; and (3) of a similar study to WPHS, the Canadian Physicians’ Health Study. She has traveled and worked in over 60 countries, and is extensively published with over 130 articles (including four first-authored JAMA publications, and additional first-authored articles in the Lancet, BMJ, and other major medical journals).

Relevant publications include:
Factors affecting weight counseling attitudes and behaviors among U.S. Medical Students
U.S. primary care physicians' diet-, physical activity-, and weight-related care of adult patients
Predictors of US medical students’ prevention counseling practices

Dr. Rebecca Puhl is Director of Research and Weight Stigma Initiatives at the Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity at Yale University where she is also a Senior Research Scientist. Dr. Puhl is responsible for identifying and coordinating research and policy efforts aimed at reducing weight bias.

Dr. Puhl has been studying weight bias for over a decade, and has published a range of experimental studies, population-based studies, review papers, and chapters on this topic. Her recent publications address the prevalence and origins of weight stigma, interventions to reduce weight bias, and the impact of weight stigma on emotional and physical health. She has presented on these topics to academic, professional, and community groups across the country, and her research has received national and international media attention. Dr. Puhl serves on the Council of The Obesity Society, and is an editor of the book Weight Bias: Nature, Extent, and Remedies (Guilford Press, 2005). She also served as guest editor for a supplement issue in the journal Obesity, entitled "Weight Bias: New Science on a Significant Social Problem".

Relevant resources and publications include:
Reducing anti-fat prejudice in preservice health students: a randomized trial
Preventing Weight Bias: Helping Without Harming in Clinical Practice
Weight Bias in Clinical Settings: Improving Health Care Delivery for Obese Patients