Christine A. Swanson, Ph.D., Director, Dietary Supplements Research Centers Program

Christine Swanson, Ph.D., joined the ODS as a nutrition scientist in November 1998. Her primary responsibility as a science administrator is to facilitate research to explore the potential role of dietary supplements in maintaining health and preventing chronic disease. In response to a Congressional mandate to develop a botanical research initiative in 1999, Dr. Swanson directed activities to establish the first NIH-funded Dietary Supplements Research Center. The overall focus of the Center and its research is to foster interdisciplinary collaborations in order to develop systematic approaches to evaluate the safety and efficacy of botanicals. Dr. Swanson is also directing activities to compile a database to identify and track NIH-funded research on dietary supplements. Eventually the CARDS (Computer Access to Research on Dietary Supplements) database will be expanded to cover all federally funded research.

Dr. Swanson has extensive research experience, authoring over 70 scientific papers. Prior to joining the ODS, she worked for 13 years as an intramural scientist at the NCI in the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics. She has conducted several epidemiological studies to evaluate the relation of diet and nutritional status to cancer risk. In the last five years, her research was focused on alcohol and body size as risk factors. Dr. Swanson taught nutritional epidemiology to students and clinicians at the University of Indonesia, Jakarta. Dr. Swanson has considerable research experience in nutritional sciences, specifically in the area of trace elements. For several years, she conducted human metabolic studies of zinc and selenium.

Dr. Swanson received two graduate degrees from the University of California at Berkeley. She received her doctorate in nutritional sciences in 1980 and earned her M.P.H. four years later. She did postdoctoral work at the USDA Human Nutrition Research Center in Beltsville MD and obtained additional research experience in Switzerland while working at the Nestle Human Nutrition Research Center. She received her undergraduate training in dietetics at Montana State University in Bozeman.