Johanna T. Dwyer, D.Sc., R.D., Senior Nutrition Scientist (IPA)
Dr. Johanna Dwyer is a Senior Nutrition Scientist at the NIH Office of Dietary Supplements where she works under the Interagency Personnel Acquisition Program (IPA). At ODS her work involves the development of a Dietary Supplement Ingredient Database that will provide analytically substantiated values for key ingredients in dietary supplements. Dr. Dwyer also directs activities on developing understanding of dietary supplement motivation and use on the part of Americans, and is currently supervising a study involving secondary analyses of several large scale surveys of consumers on their motivations for the use of various dietary supplements. Dr. Dwyer is the author or co-author of more than 200 original research articles and 280 review articles published in scientific journals on topics including preventing diet-related disease in children and adolescents; maximizing quality of life and health in the elderly; and vegetarian and other alternative lifestyles. In addition to her work as a scholar and clinician, her interests in public policy and specifically nutrition policy have led to extensive involvement and assignments in Washington, DC. Work on such projects has included the White House Conference on Food, Nutrition and Health, the organization of nutrition research in the federal government, strengthening the role of human nutrition in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and assuring that the national population-based nutrition surveys remain strong. She has also been active in a number of professional associations.
From 2001-2002, Dr. Dwyer worked as the Assistant Administrator for Human Nutrition, Agricultural Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture. She is the past President of the American Institute of Nutrition, past Secretary of the American Society for Clinical Nutrition, past President and Fellow of the Society for Nutrition Education. She was a member of the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Academy of Sciences from 1990-2002. She is a member of the Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences, and served on its Council.
Dr. Dwyer was a member of the Year 2000 Dietary Guidelines Committee. She served as a study section member for the National Institutes of Health, and also on the Board of Scientific Counselors for the National Cancer Institute's Division of Cancer Prevention and Control. As a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellow (1980-1981), she served on the personal staffs of Senator Richard Lugar (R-Indiana) and the Hon. Barbara Mikulski (D-Maryland). She served on President Carter's President's Reorganization Project in the Executive Office of the President, the White House. She also was vice chair and later chair of the food advisory group of the Office of Technology Assessment, U.S. Congress.
Dr. Dwyer received the W. O. Atwater Award in 1996 from the U. S. Department of Agriculture, the J. Harvey Wiley Award from the Society for Nutrition Education and the American Dietetic Association's Medallion award.
For the Tufts portion of her time Dwyer serves as the Director of the Frances Stern Nutrition Center at Tufts-New England Medical Center, Professor of Medicine (Nutrition) and Community Health at the Tufts University Medical School, and Professor of Nutrition at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. She is also Senior Scientist at the Jean Mayer/USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University.
Dr. Dwyer received her D.Sc. and M.Sc. from the Harvard School of Public Health, an M.S. from the University of Wisconsin, and completed her undergraduate degree with distinction from Cornell University. Prior to her position at Tufts, she served on the faculty of the Harvard School of Public Health.