Nutrition - LLU School of Public Health Nutrition Faculty and Staff

Loma Linda University | Loma Linda University Medical Center

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Nutrition Faculty & Staff

Joan Sabaté, MD, DrPH

Chair, Department of Nutrition
Professor, Department of Epidemiology
Program Coordinator, MPH Nutrition & Epidemiology

Email: jsabate@llu.edu

From Spain, Dr. Sabaté is a board certified physician in internal medicine who moved to the U.S. to further train in Public Health Nutrition. He obtained the degree of Doctor of Public Health in Nutrition from Loma Linda University. He was an American Heart Association post doctoral fellow in the Preventive Medicine Department then became an Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology & Biostatistics and in the Department of Nutrition. Shortly after, he rose to Associate Professor. In 1998 he was named Chair of the Department of Nutrition while continuing his teaching commitments in epidemiology. more>>

Current research interests:

nutritional properties of tree nuts and their impact on chronic disease; health benefits of vegetarian nutrition; development and validation of dietary assessment methods

Zaida Cordero-MacIntyre, PhD

Assistant Professor, Department of Nutrition

Email: zcordero-macintyre@llu.edu

After completing her doctoral degree in Pharmacy in Bolivia, South America, Dr. MacIntyre earned an MPH in Environmental and Tropical Health and an MS in Nutrition from Loma Linda University. She continued her graduate education at the University of Arizona, receiving her PhD in Nutrition Science. She is a registered environmental health specialist in the state of California. She is also a registered dietitian. In 1995 she joined the faculty at the Department of Nutrition. Dr. Cordero-MacIntyre is also part of the research faculty of the Center of Health Care Disparities and Molecular Medicine in the School of Medicine.

Much of Dr. Cordero-MacIntyre's research endeavors have been in the area of obesity and diabetes. She has many published articles and abstracts. She is currently conducting research on diabetes in the Hispanic community. This study is funded by a grant from the National Institutes for Health.

Current research interests:

obesity, diabetes

Ella Haddad, DrPH

Associate Professor, Department of Nutrition
Program Coordinator, MPH Nutrition coordinated program

Email: ehaddad@llu.edu

Dr. Haddad completed her undergraduate work at La Sierra University in Riverside, California and became a registered dietitian. She obtained the MS and DrPH degrees in 1978 from Loma Linda University. Moving to the Middle East she taught at both Middle East College and the American University of Beirut before returning to Loma Linda as Assistant Professor, now Associate Professor. She is the Coordinator of the MPH program. more>>

Current research interests:

vegetarian diets; nutritional properties of pecans and other nuts

Sujatha Rajaram, PhD

Program Coordinator, MS Nutritional Science & Program
Coordinator, DrPH Nutrition
Associate Professor, Department of Nutrition

Email: srajaram@llu.edu

Dr. Rajaram comes to Loma Linda University by way of her native country India. She completed her undergraduate work at Madras University in India and obtained her master of science degree from Home Science University in Coimbatore, India. She received a Research Assistantship from Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana where she obtained her PhD in Foods and Nutrition. She was able to gain considerable teaching and research experience during her doctoral program and went on to a post doctoral fellowship at the University of Tennessee, Memphis, TN. more>>

Current research interests:

Nuts and prevention of chronic diseases
N-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids from plant and marine sources and their role in chronic disease prevention

Michelle Wien, DrPH, RD,

Coordinator, Field Practicum Program

Email: mwien@llu.edu

Upon graduating from college, Dr. Wien became a certified diabetes educator and worked as a dietitian with an emphasis on diabetes. Earning her master of science degree at California State Polytechnic Institute, she came to Loma Linda University for her doctoral program. Upon receiving her DrPH in the Department of Nutrition, she became a post doctoral fellow at The City of Hope and Beckman Research Institute in Duarte, California. Following two years as an Assistant Professor at the University of Medicine and Dentistry in New Jersey, she returned to LLU in 2007 as Assistant Professor in the Department of Nutrition. She manages the field practicum program for the department. more>>

Current research interests:

weight management, diabetes treatment and prevention

Karen Jaceldo-Siegl, DrPH

Email: kjaceldo@llu.edu

Dr. Jaceldo comes to Loma Linda by way of Texas where she completed her undergraduate work in chemistry and obtained her masters degree in Nutrition. In 2003 she earned a doctor in public health degree in nutrition from Loma Linda University. She then became a full time research associate for the Adventist Health Study-2, a NIH funded research program at the LLU School of Public Health. This is a cohort study of Seventh-day Adventists in US and Canada designed to determine the relationship between their diets and chronic disease. Her role in AHS-2 has given her the opportunity to focus on the validation of food frequency questionnaires using dietary recalls and biomarkers as references, of interest to her since her graduate studies. more>>

Current research interests:

food frequency questionnaire validation, nuts and soy consumption and health outcomes, dietary assessment methods

Gina Siapco, DrPH

Email: gsiapco@llu.edu

A graduate of the doctoral program at Loma Linda University, Department of Nutrition, Dr. Gina Segovia-Siapco has returned to the department in April 2009 as assistant professor. She earned her Master of Public Health degree from the Adventist International Institute of Advanced Studies (AIIAS) in Cavite, Philippines. Upon completion of her doctoral degree from LLU in 2004, she returned to her native Philippines to resume her teaching position at AIIAS where she served as chair of the Department of Public Health at the School of Graduate Studies from 2006 to 2009. more>>

Current research interests:

effect of legume intake on health; development and validation of food frequency questionnaires

Eddy Jara

Email: ejara@llu.edu

Dr. Jara has a shared appointment with both the Department of Global Health and the Department of Nutrition. His doctoral work has looked at how to disseminate promising school food practices in working class communities of color. Dr. Jara's early professional career was defined by his work promoting improved school nutrition and physical activity options in predominantly Latino middle and high schools in the Inland Empire. In Ecuador, he worked as a Technical Health Trainer with Peace Corps volunteers and on several community projects advancing child malnutrition prevention, identification and treatment.

Current research interests:

studying efforts to improve youth and family access to healthy foods and training lay public health workers in health education and promotion

Nico Rizzo

Email: nrizzo@llu.edu

Nico S. Rizzo is completing a 2-year postdoctoral appointment in the Department of Nutrition. He obtained a Masters of Science degree from the Justus Liebig Universität in Gießen, Germany and a PhD in Medicine from the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden. He was the recipient of the European Union Socrates/Erasmus Scholarship for studies conducted at Karolinska Institutet previous to his PhD studies. His doctoral research focused on the associations between physical activity, cardio respiratory fitness and metabolic risk factors. His work was done in collaboration with the European Youth Heart Study (EYHS) whose main aim is to study the nature, strength and interactions between personal, environmental and lifestyles influences on CVD risk in European children of differing age, sex, culture and ethnicity.

He has authored several peer reviewed international journal articles on physical activity and chronic disease. Dr. Rizzo has been a lecturer at the Department of Bioscience and Nutrition and the Department of Medical Nutrition at Karolinska Institutet and a guest lecturer at the CASCADE Network of Excellence which seeks durable coordination and integration of European research on the human health effects of chemical residues in food and is funded by the European Commission.

Beside his academic teaching appointments Dr. Rizzo has conducted prevention focused health seminars in Europe, Puerto Rico, Micronesia and developing countries. During his time at Loma Linda he will integrate dietary and nutritional factors into his previous research allowing him to explore new methodologies and interactive ways of examining associations between physical activity, nutrition and chronic disease risk factors. He is a co-investigator of a project focusing on nutrition-gene interaction and trans-generational inheritance funded by the Swedish Research Council and an ambassador of the International Society for Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity. He is a member of the American College of Sports Medicine, the American Heart Association, and the Nutrition Society.