Steering Committee - Biography

Rachel Novotny, PhD, RD

Program Director of Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research, Hawaii, Professor at the University of Hawaii, and serves on the Executive Committee of the PhD program in Nutritional Sciences at the University of Hawaii

Dr. Novotny’s research focuses on how diet, physical activity, and body size affect health and disease. Trained in International Nutrition from Cornell University, she also holds a Registered Dietitian’s license and has done Post-doctoral work in Public Health. Dr. Novotny is Principal Investigator for the Healthy Living in the Pacific Islands Initiative and its Healthy Pacific Child Program, which uses community based research to develop and test tools to assess diet and physical activity of children of the Pacific Region, to modify the food system to decrease obesity. A new program, the Pacific Kids DASH for Health (PacDASH) is designed to curb child obesity by working with health teams to provide dietary and physical activity information in collaboration with farmer’s markets. Her Female Adolescent Maturation (FAM) Cohort examines nutritional, physical activity and genetic factors influencing indicators of maturation, body composition, and growth.

CVRN Center: KPH Center for Health Research Hawaii