Shiriki Kumanyika is a Research Professor of Community Health and Prevention, Drexel University Dornsife School of Public Health and an Emeritus Professor of Epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania and both located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. At the Dornsife School, she leads the African American Collaborative Obesity Research Network, which she founded in 2002 as a national affinity group and collaboration platform comprising senior and early career researchers and community-based research partners. She is also a past president of the American Public Health Association. Dr. Kumanyika’s research and policy activities focus on diet-related chronic diseases, particularly obesity and it health consequences, and on health inequities related to race/ethnicity. In the USA she is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) and has been extensively involved in obesity-related studies and committees through the NAM’s Health and Medicine Division (formerly the Institute of Medicine). In the global sphere, Dr. Kumanyika is co-chair of the Policy and Prevention Section of the World Obesity Federation and an advisor to the World Health Organization and the World Cancer Research Fund.
