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.
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