Experts on Obesity

Andrea Garber is a nutritionist and coordinator of the Weight Assessment for Teen and Child Health (WATCH) Clinic, the pediatric and adolescent obesity program at UCSF Children's Hospital. She also provides nutrition screening and counseling to patients in Teen Clinic. Her research and work in patient care focus on obesity and eating disorders. She has several ongoing research projects, including studies of hypothalamic obesity and adolescents hospitalized with anorexia nervosa. As an assistant professor of pediatrics, she teaches adolescent nutrition to medical students and residents and serves on several advisory committees in the community. Garber earned her doctorate in clinical nutrition at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is a registered dietitian.

Dr. Michele Mietus-Snyder, a preventive cardiologist, is co-director of the Weight Assessment for Teen and Child Health (WATCH) Clinic at UCSF Children's Hospital and director of the Balance Weight, Energy and Lipids for Life Clinic at Children's Hospital Oakland. She is committed to developing comprehensive weight management programs, targeting high-risk, inner city populations, that emphasize exercise and physical activity with healthy eating rather than caloric restriction. These efforts are aimed at identifying effective preventive health strategies that can be adopted as a lifelong ethic for heart-healthy living.

She has research experience in redox gene regulation as well as vascular reactivity as a noninvasive measure of blood vessel function and health. She is interested in the study of genetic and environmental triggers for atherosclerotic risk and in pediatric hyperlipidemias, which often coexist in overweight children. Mietus-Snyder earned her medical degree at the University of California, San Diego. She completed a residency in pediatrics and a fellowship in pediatric cardiology at Children's Hospital Boston. She came to the University of California, San Francisco in 1992, where she is an assistant professor in Physiological Nursing and Pediatric Medicine.

This expert is not a member of the UCSF Medical Group. Please check with your health insurance plan regarding coverage for services.

Joan Orrell-Valente provides psychological consultation at the Weight Assessment for Teen and Child Health (WATCH) Clinic at UCSF Children's Hospital. Her research addresses the influence of parents' influence on issues of child and adolescent health, in particular prevention and reduction of obesity and sexual risk-taking. She is conducting a study on psychosocial factors -- such as family stress, childhood stress, structure and process of childhood mealtime environment, parental psychopathology and child psychopathology -- that may explain, in part, the development of behavioral patterns associated with obesity in young adulthood. Orrell-Valente also is conducting a study to clarify the relations among the content and style of parent-adolescent communication, adolescent sexual risk judgments, decision-making and behavior. She is an assistant professor of pediatrics in the Research and Policy Center for Childhood and Adolescence of the Division of Adolescent Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.

Orrell-Valente received a doctorate in clinical child psychology from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., with a specialization in developmental psychopathology. She completed a clinical pediatric psychology internship at Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., where she worked extensively with children and adolescents with chronic medical conditions. She then completed a postdoctoral fellowship in adolescent health at UCSF in the Division of Adolescent Medicine.

Ashleigh Sellman is a registered dietician and a certified specialist in pediatric nutrition at UCSF Children's Hospital, where she has helped children with weight and nutrition issues since 2000. She provides medical nutrition therapy for children and their families as an outpatient pediatric nutritionist working with the Children's Renal Center, Pediatric Cystic Fibrosis Center and the Nutrition Counseling Center. Sellman earned her bachelor's in science from James Madison University in Virginia and went on to complete her dietetic internship at the University of Virginia.