Bettylou Sherry, PhD, RD

For the past 18 years, Dr. Sherry has worked in the Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity (DNPAO), the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She is Lead Epidemiologist for the Research and Surveillance Team in the Obesity Prevention and Control Branch. Previously she worked as an epidemiologist in the Obesity Prevention and Control Branch and, prior to that, in the former Maternal and Child Nutrition Branch. Her primary interest is preventing pediatric obesity. Her research on obesity includes monitoring trends; increasing the capacity of surveillance systems to monitor two of DNPAO’s behavioral targets to prevent obesity, namely reducing the consumption of sugary drinks and TV/screen time; examining various risk factors for overweight in childhood, more specifically, television viewing, the role of parental control of child feeding; and evaluating the evidence for effective strategies to prevent overweight during childhood. As part of DNPAO’s effort to promote policy and environmental changes to make the easy choice the healthy choice, she was a key author on a Guidance Document for states to help them reduce the consumption of sugary drinks. She has provided technical expertise for several CDC funded projects related to obesity. These include a current project to develop, implement and evaluate an intervention for removing televisions from children’s bedrooms. Previous projects included a pilot on surveillance of BMI in schools, determining the longitudinal association between maternal child feeding practices and subsequent child obesity, examining crossing growth percentiles during infancy and subsequent child obesity, and forecasting obesity prevalence and health care costs. She is member of the National Collaborative on Child Obesity Research (NCCOR) which represents a partnership between three government agencies (CDC, NIH, USDA) and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundations to maximize and coordinate their initiatives to prevent child obesity. She is a participant in DNPAO’s Workgroup on the 2020 Health Objectives for the Nation, and she is a member of the Assembly for the National Children’s Study. In the past, Dr. Sherry has conducted research on child growth, anemia, and food insecurity.
Prior to her work at CDC, she was an Assistant Professor in the Maternal and Child Health Program, Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health and Community Medicine, at the University of Washington in Seattle, WA. In addition to her teaching role there, she conducted research on the impact of maternal and pediatric HIV on growth among children attending a Pediatric AIDS Clinic in Nairobi, Kenya; food insecurity; and the incidence and impact of Haemophilus influenzae type B meningitis on nutritional status.
Dr. Sherry has a M.S. in Food, Nutrition, and Dietetics and a Ph.D. in Epidemiology, both from the University of Washington. In addition, she is also a Fellow in the Obesity Society and she maintains her status as a Registered Dietitian.