William C. Knowler is chief of the Diabetes Epidemiology and Clinical Research Section in the Division of Intramural Research at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. The Institute has primary responsibility for diabetes research at the National Institutes of Health. For more than three decades, Dr. Knowler has conducted research on diabetes in the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona, looking for insights into the genetic and environmental factors that lead to the development of Type 2 diabetes.
My research is directed toward understanding why children eat the foods and engage in the physical activities they do as well as designing and evaluating programs to help change these dietary and physical activity behaviors. Areas of interest include fruit, juice, vegetable (FJV) and water consumption, obesity prevention and physical activity. Differences in these phenomena among major ethnic categories are of particular interest, as is innovations in their measurements.
