Deanna Hoelscher, PhD, RDN, LD, CNS, FISBNPA
John P. McGovern Professor in Health Promotion and Austin Regional Dean, Health Promotion & Behavioral Sciences
Director, Michael & Susan Dell Center for Healthy Living
[email protected]
Dr. Hoelscher’s research interests include teaching children and their families to engage in healthier dietary and physical activity behaviors to avoid chronic diseases, with an emphasis on addressing health disparities. Her recent work has focused on implementing interventions and evaluations on policy, systems, and environmental changes, especially focused on maternal and child health.
Dr. Hoelscher has received multiple federal and foundation grants, and has over 240 peer-reviewed publications, as well as numerous awards for research, teaching, and mentoring. She is principal investigator of the Texas School Physical Activity and Nutrition (Texas SPAN) survey funded by the Texas Department of State Health Services, the STREETS project, a NIH-funded natural experiment to determine the effects of Safe Routes to School policies on child physical activity, the Active Middle School Communities grant funded by NIH, and the Executive Sponsor of the Texas Collaborative for Healthy Mothers and Babies (TCHMB). She is also Director of the Michael & Susan Dell Center for Healthy Living, where she oversees the Texas Research-to-Policy Collaboration project.
In 2018, Dr. Hoelscher became Regional Dean of the UTHealth Houston School of Public Health in Austin, which is the largest of the five regional locations for the UTHealth Houston School of Public Health. Dr. Hoelscher was President of the International Society of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity (ISBNPA) from 2012 to 2013 and elected a Fellow of ISBNPA in 2015. She served as a Member-at-Large for The Obesity Society, and has held leadership positions at the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and the Society for Nutrition Education and Behavior. She is currently serving on the Dietary Guideline Advisory Committee for the 2025-2030 Guidelines.
She has won numerous awards for teaching and research, including the John P. McGovern Professorship in Health Promotion, the Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award in 2017, and has been designated as a Distinguished Teaching Professor at The University of Texas System. She recently received the Oded Bar-Or award from Pediatric Section of The Obesity Society.
The Gerry Sue and Norman J. Arnold 2019 Childhood Obesity Lecture Series
Arnold School of Public Health at The University of South Carolina
Keynote Speaker: Dr. Deanna Hoelscher
Keynote: "Combating Child Obesity from Population to Policy"
