Dr. Qutaibah Oudat holds a PhD from the University of Cincinnati and an MPH in Epidemiology from the University of Newcastle, Australia. His dissertation research explored theoretical determinants influencing the diet quality of preschool-aged children and the feeding practices of their caregivers. Following the completion of his PhD, Dr. Oudat is a current mentee in the American Public Health Association (APHA) Maternal and Child Health Mentorship Program, where he collaborates on several innovative projects in obesity prevention and health promotion. Additionally, he served as a postdoctoral research and teaching fellow in the Department of Kinesiology and Public Health at California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly). Dr. Oudat possesses extensive training and expertise across a wide range of research areas, such as obesity prevention and treatment during early childhood, caregiver feeding practices, food addiction, health disparities, health promotion, community-based research, health behaviors and outcomes, disease prevention, and data science. His research philosophy centers on advancing equitable health and well-being for all individuals.
Prof. Sarah E. Messiah, Ph.D., MPH, FTOS is a tenured Professor of Epidemiology, Human Genetics and Environmental Sciences and the Director for the Center for Pediatric Population Health at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UT Health) School of Public Health. She is the Distinguished Chair of Pediatric Population Health and the Director of
the Center for Pediatric Population Health at UT Health School of Public Health. She holds adjunct appointments at UT Southwestern Medical Center in the School of Public Health, The Department of Pediatrics at McGovern Medical
School in Houston, TX, and in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. She is formally trained as an advanced life course epidemiologist and has focused her career on examining unhealthy weight
and cardiometabolic disease across the life course. Her work focuses on cardiometabolic disease risk in youth as a result of obesity and treatment outcomes, including bariatric surgery to ameliorate these risks.
