Published July 20, 2010 This content is archived.
Leonard Epstein, PhD, UB Distinguished Professor in the departments of Pediatrics and Social and Preventive Medicine, has been named a State University of New York (SUNY) Distinguished Professor, which recognizes a faculty member’s national or international prominence in his field.
Epstein heads the Division of Behavioral Medicine in the school, in addition to holding faculty appointments in the School of Public Health and Health Professions and the medical school.
A scholar in the fields of behavioral medicine, nutrition and therapy, Epstein is one of the world’s foremost experts in the area of childhood obesity. He developed the Traffic Light Diet Plan to help families instill healthy eating habits in overweight children, and it remains one of the few plans shown to produce long-term success for obese children. He also was the first researcher to demonstrate a relationship between television watching and childhood obesity.
Epstein’s current research explores the role of the dopaminergic system and food habitation in obesity.