HPDP’s Dianne Ward, EdD, has been recognized as a “World Expert” in child care by Expertscape, a service that ranks the expertise of researchers in biomedical fields. She is among the top 0.062% of published authors in child care research worldwide, and she ranks ninth in the U.S.
The rankings are based on Expertscape’s algorithm, which reviews PubMed journal articles over the previous 10 years and ranks the authors according to the number and quality of their publications, considering factors that include how recently their work was published, the types of articles they have authored, and the quality of the journals where they are published.
Dr. Ward is a research fellow at HPDP and professor of nutrition at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. Her research focuses on preventing obesity and improving health and well-being through early care and education, home, and community interventions promoting healthy eating and physical activity.
She directs the Children’s Healthy Weight Research Group, a research team at HPDP that develops and evaluates evidence-based strategies for obesity prevention and health promotion for children and their caregivers. The group developed Go NAPSACC, an online program that works with child-care providers to improve the health of young children through practices, policies, and environments that instill habits supporting lifelong health and well-being. As of August 2021, 6,270 child-care programs across the country, serving over 307,000 children, have used the Go NAPSACC program.