Debra Haire-Joshu, PhD, is the Joyce and Chauncy Buchheit Professor in Public Health and the associate dean for faculty affairs at the Bursky School of Public Health. Her research has been funded continuously by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for more than 30 years, and centers on maternal and child health and cardiometabolic disease prevention in under-resourced populations. As Director of both the Center for Diabetes Translation Research (CDTR) and Center for Obesity Prevention and Policy Research (COPPR), and former assistant vice provost for School of Public Health Implementation, she plays a key leadership role in advancing public health strategy, faculty development, and interdisciplinary health initiatives across the university.

Haire-Joshu addresses the biological, behavioral and environmental drivers of obesity, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease across pregnancy, the postpartum transition and early childhood. Her research designs and evaluates scalable, culturally grounded interventions to improve outcomes among underserved women and children. By leveraging established community networks, such as national home visiting programs and primary care systems, her portfolio delivers evidence-based strategies directly to high-risk families to interrupt the intergenerational transmission of chronic disease.

Her scientific leadership extends to major national clinical trials and federal advisory bodies. Dr. Haire-Joshu holds leadership positions in the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute’s (NHLBI) ENRICH National Trial Consortium, previously co-chaired the Lifestyle Interventions for Expectant Moms (LIFE-Moms) Trial Consortium, and was a member of the NIH-National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) Advisory Council. Informed by her service as a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellow in the U.S. Senate, she worked with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to inform national policy and guidelines on maternal health, infant nutrition, and early childhood obesity prevention. She has published extensively and authored award-winning textbooks on diabetes across the lifespan and public health practice. 

Areas of focus:

• Health policy
• Preventing obesity and diabetes in underserved populations
• Transdisciplinary approaches to biomedical, behavioral, and public health research